Family Empowerment for Enhanced Development

Children have not been spared from the obesity epidemic. There is a great need for innovative interventions to help families build healthy habits early in life for obesity prevention. Low-income preschoolers have a disproportionately high rate of childhood obesity, and their families face complex barriers to healthy behavior change. This proposed pilot study will examine the feasibility of delivering the Promoting Routines of Exploration and Play during Mealtime (Mealtime PREP) intervention in a sample of low-income families with young children (ages 2-5). Our parent-mediated intervention is designed to promote healthy dietary variety using routine family meals, positive reinforcement, social modeling, and food exploration and play. By harnessing the behavior change capacity of behavioral activation to alter daily mealtimes incrementally, parents are empowered to overcome barriers to healthy habit formation. Each family will participate in a six-week intervention that is delivered by occupational therapy clinicians in the home environment. Each session will last approximately one hour and include individualized parent-training and a parent-led mealtime with direct feedback from the clinician. We planned to screen up to 100 potential parent and child participants, with a plan to deliver intervention to 20 child participants.