Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

There is growing interest in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) among funders and researchers, especially in the field of childhood obesity research where there have been challenges engaging parents and sustaining their participation. The inclusion of parents is essential because they model eating behavior and provide home nutrition environment. Further, parenting styles influence nutrition and other obesity related behaviors. CBPRincreases quality and validity of research, enhancesdata relevance, and improves intervention design and translation. CBPR involves stakeholders as equal participants throughout the research process and combines research knowledge and action to promote health. I will present on how the communities for healthy living project used a parent focused CBPR approach to engage parents in the design, implementation, and evaluation of childhood obesity prevention intervention that targeted low-income, head Start families. Communities for healthy living administered a four pronged intervention that included a print media campaign, modification of organizational processes for informing parents of weight status, nutrition counseling sessions, and a six week intensive parent program. This project used gold standard measures of childhood obesity risk factors and a parent survey in a repeated-measure research design to evaluate the intervention. I will present strategies for engaging low-income parents in the research process and the intervention. I will also present how parent engagement benefited the research, including improving the saliency of the intervention and relevance of the outcome data. A discussion of challenges of the CBPR process and how to address some of those challenges will also be included in the presentation.

Biography

Janine M Jurkowski research focuses on association of social determinants with chronic disease related behavioral outcomes among low-income and minority women and families using CBPR. She has experience in childhood obesity intervention research. She has several peer-reviewed publications and presentations on CBPR and childhood obesity among disparate populations. She received national recognition for her research when she received the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of APHA’s Dr. Tom Bruce Award of Honor for being an “extraordinary local and national leader in Community Based Participatory Research”. She also taught an American Public Health Association Learning Institute on Community-Based Participatory Research in 2013 and has led several presentations on addressing health disparities using CBPR.

Email: jjurkowski@albany.edu