A Home-based Video and Motivational Interviewing Intervention to Improve Preschoolers Diet Quality and Parental Food Parenting Practices
The Strong Families Start at Home/Familias Fuertes Comienzan en Casa, is a National Institute of Health funded randomized controlled trial (1R01HD108832-01A1) that is testing the impact of a home-based “nutrition/feeding” vs. a “reading readiness” intervention with low-income, Hispanic/Latinx families on the diet quality of preschool aged children. The intervention, delivered by community health workers, is intended to empower caregivers to identify and implement positive feeding practices, tailor their feeding practices to their child’s appetitive traits, and use healthy food shopping and preparation strategies.
WIC Community Innovation and Outreach (CIAO) Rhode Island
The WIC CIAO Project is a national initiative funded by a grant to the Food Research & Action Center from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service to create this five-year initiative to help increase WIC participation. Rhode Island is one of the states that received funding to help increase participation and retention in the program. Together with the WIC program at the Department of Health, we are using an implementation science framework to understand barriers and facilitators to participation and retention which will inform a “WIC Implementation” blueprint. Together with other outreach strategies (i.e text messaging, outreach training) we hope to increase participation and retention of WIC in our state.
What’s on Your Plate Study
In 2022, the General Assembly of Rhode Island passed an amendment to the Public Assistance Act, which provides funding to administer and implement the Rhode Island Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (SNAP) Incentives Program (Eat Well be Well). The aim is to improve access to and encourage consumption of fruits and
vegetables among SNAP participants. SNAP participants will receive a fifty-cent ($0.50) for every dollar ($1.00) spent on fruits and vegetables from qualified retailers directly to their EBT Card. This study is evaluating the impact of this legislation on dietary intake. Funded by Bloomberg Foundation.
Developing and Testing a Produce Prescription Implementation Blueprint to Improve Food Security in a Clinical Setting
The aims of this project, are to: 1) Identify, using an implementation science framework, barriers, facilitators, and current implementation strategies for the existing VRx program with participating patients and providers; 2) Develop an enhanced set of implementation strategies (i.e., an implementation blueprint) to support uptake of the VRx intervention together with a group of stakeholders; 3) Pilot test the enhanced implementation blueprint (VRx + vs. Usual VRx) on implementation and health outcomes.
Addressing Early Childhood Obesity in Low-Income Families
This project is part of the University of California’s Riverside School of Medicine’s Center for Health Disparities Research. The goal of this project is to characterize infant feeding practices and develop nutrition education that promotes healthy feeding practices among multiple caregivers to develop and pilot test an intervention within Early Head Start. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (5U54MD013368-03 ).
Development of a Quality Improvement Toolkit for Measurement and Communication of Obesity Risk in Head Starts
Together with key stakeholders, we will then develop procedures, protocols, and trainings for anthropometric data collection to be used within their Head Start (HS) programs. We will test acceptability and feasibility of the new procedures, protocols, and trainings via interviews with Health Managers, and teachers, from at least three HS programs across the three states. Concurrently, we will convene a panel of experts to describe best practices as it relates to communicating health behavior and BMI data with families. Finally, we will draft sample policy related to anthropometric data collection that could be adopted by HS programs nationally. Funded by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.