Elsevier

Preventive Medicine

Volume 51, Issue 2, August 2010, Pages 103-111
Preventive Medicine

Review
Parental involvement in interventions to improve child dietary intake: A systematic review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2010.04.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

Interventions that aim to improve child dietary quality and reduce disease risk often involve parents. The most effective methods to engage parents remain unclear. A systematic review of interventions designed to change child and adolescent dietary behavior was conducted to answer whether parent involvement enhanced intervention effectiveness, and what type of involvement was most effective in achieving desired outcomes.

Method

In 2008, Pub Med, Medline, Psych Info, and Cochrane Library databases were searched to identify programs designed to change child and adolescent dietary intake that also involved parents. Methods of parental involvement were categorized based on the type and intensity of parental involvement. These methods were compared against intervention design, dietary outcomes, and quality of reporting (evaluated using CONSORT checklist) for each study.

Results

The literature search identified 1774 articles and 24 met review criteria. Four studies systematically evaluated parent involvement with inconsistent results. Indirect methods to engage parents were most commonly used, although direct approaches were more likely to result in positive outcomes. Four studies met > 70% of CONSORT items.

Conclusion

Limited conclusions may be drawn regarding the best method to involve parents in changing child diet to promote health. However, direct methods show promise and warrant further research.

Introduction

Pediatric obesity continues to be a significant public health issue (Hedley et al., 2004, Ogden et al., 2008). Obesity during childhood is associated with increased disease risk and morbidities during young adulthood, and increased mortality later in life (Must and Strauss, 1999, Reilly et al., 2003). Dietary habits acquired in childhood track to adulthood (Kelder et al., 1994, Li and Wang, 2008, Lien et al., 2001), and changes in diet during childhood are significant predictors of diet quality in adults (Mikkila et al., 2004). Child dietary behavior is determined in part by individual factors (e.g. food preferences) (Capaldi, 1996), socio-cultural factors (e.g. peer norms and parent attitudes/beliefs) (Rozin, 1996) and environmental factors (e.g. availability of healthy food) (French et al., 2001). Parents are instrumental in influencing child diet by providing their child with the ability and opportunity to make healthy or unhealthy choices through the selective use of food parenting practices (i.e. behaviors that parents use to influence children on what and how much to eat) (Hoerr et al., 2009). Since food choices are related to energy intake and obesity risk, parent involvement in child dietary interventions seems crucial to mitigating risk (Rennie et al., 2005). The refractory nature of adult obesity suggests early establishment of healthy eating habits may be a key to prevention (Lobstein et al., 2004).

Reviews of childhood obesity prevention studies have largely focused on school-based programs, many of which did not include a parent component. (Baranowski et al., 2002, Brown and Summerbell, 2008, Sharma et al., 2004, Shaya et al., 2008, Summerbell et al., 2006, Thomas, 2006). A meta-analysis of pediatric obesity prevention programs that included an estimation of a “parent effect” found parental involvement (in 12 of the 46 studies) to be unrelated to larger effect sizes (Stice et al., 2006). A systematic review of studies that aimed to impact young children's weight status, physical activity, diet or sedentary behaviors (Campbell and Hesketh, 2007) concluded parents were “receptive to and capable of some behavioral changes that may promote healthy weight in their young children,” but due to the limited number of studies in this age group, the authors were unable to draw any conclusions as to the most effective strategies. As a result, we conducted a systematic review of randomized controlled intervention trials designed to prevent obesity, prevent disease, and/or promote health in children and adolescents through dietary behavior changes that involved parents. We summarized and evaluated the type of parent involvement that had been implemented in each study to answer two questions: 1) whether parent involvement enhanced program effectiveness, and 2) what type of parent involvement, if any, was most effective in achieving dietary change outcomes.

Section snippets

Methods

Following procedures for a systematic review (Lichtenstein et al., 2008), we searched Pub Med, Medline, Psych Info, and Cochrane Library electronic databases to identify individual and population-based obesity/disease prevention and health promotion programs designed to change child and adolescent dietary intake that involved parents. Key terms representing child and adolescent dietary behaviors that were associated with obesity in the literature were used in combination with key terms for

Results

The initial search yielded 1774 citations. After screening the titles and abstracts of candidate studies, 100 papers were retrieved and the full article reviewed. Of these 100 articles, twenty-four studies met all our criteria and were included in this review.

Discussion

There were not enough studies that compared dietary interventions for children with and without parental components to adequately answer whether parent involvement enhanced program effectiveness (Research Question 1). Despite variability in the quality of reporting of the RCTs reviewed to address Research Question 2 (What type of parent involvement was most effective in achieving dietary outcomes?), interesting patterns emerged. Studies that used direct methods to engage parents were more

Summary and conclusions

Currently, limited conclusions may be drawn regarding the best method to involve parents in changing child diet to prevent obesity and improve health. Indirect methods remain the most commonly used strategies to engage parents, however, direct methods of engagement show more promise and therefore, warrant further research.

Future research should specifically test a “parent effect” by designing methodologically rigorous studies with appropriate comparison groups. Different intensities of parental

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Training Grant 5T32HD007445, “Research Training in Maternal, Infant & Child Nutrition.” This work is also a publication of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/ARS) Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and has been funded in part with federal funds from the USDA/ARS under Cooperative Agreement no. 58-6250-6001. The contents of

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