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Volume 8 J Community Med Health Educ, an open access journal
ISSN: 2161-0711 Public Health 2018
February 26-28, 2018
Page 86
Notes:
conferenceseries.com
PUBLIC HEALTH AND NUTRITION
3rd World Congress on
February 26-28, 2018 London, UK
Kim Roberts, J Community Med Health Educ 2018, Vol 8
DOI: 10.4172/2161-0711-C1-31
CAN THE HENRY PROGRAMME BE EFFECTIVELY DELIVERED BY TRAINED
VOLUNTEERS TO SUPPORT PARENTS TO ADOPT A HEALTHIER FAMILY LIFESTYLE?
Almost a quarter of children aged 4-5 are overweight and the prevalence of obesity currently stands at 9.6%. There is a clear
need for intervention in the pre-school years and HENRY’s (Health, Exercise, Nutrition for the Really Young) parent-targeted
approach has shown consistently positive results when delivered by trained staff. This study aimed to test whether the HENRY
Healthy Families programme was also effective in improving eating behaviour and habits, physical activity, parenting confidence
to provide a healthy lifestyle and emotional wellbeing when delivered by trained volunteer mentors. Further analysis explored
differences in outcomes from programmes delivered by volunteers or project staff. The programme was delivered one-to-one
over 8 weekly sessions of one hour, with outcomes measured at baseline, post-programme, and at 6 months follow-up. Parents
(N = 87) reported improvements in parenting confidence, parent and child emotional wellbeing, some family eating behaviours,
and consumption of fruit and veg (parent and child) and water (child only), but not in physical activity or consumption of
certain snack items. Some of these improvements were maintained at 6 months follow-up. There were no differences in outcomes
from programmes delivered by trained volunteers (n = 68) or project staff (n = 18). Parents who received the programme from
volunteers reported comparable gains in key health indicators of parents and children to those delivered by project staff, providing
tentative evidence that these programmes can be successfully scaled up with delivery by volunteer mentors. Future research
should test this model on a larger scale.
Biography
Kim Roberts is Chief Executive of the UK national charity, HENRY. For the last 10 years HENRY has been transforming traditional approaches to obesity prevention,
working in partnership with public health departments and academic partners across the UK to develop and test research-based practical interventions to tackle child
obesity in the preschool years.
Kim Roberts
HENRY-National Charity, UK