Details

Purpose & rationale: Obesity and obesity-related behaviours such as poor dietary habits, inadequate physical activity, and excessive screen time have been shown to established in in early childhood hood and track into later life. Thus, this demonstrates the need for scalable interventions to support parents in their efforts to create healthy lifestyle behaviours early in life. According to the National Institute of Health, implementation is a key component of the translation process and is an essential pre-requisite for research to yield improvements in public health. To date, there have been a number of promising health interventions conducted in the early years (birth through 5 years of age); however, very few have been successfully implemented in real-world settings. Therefore, this symposium aims to bridge this research gap and provide an overview of different implementation approaches for digital health interventions aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours in the early years.

Objectives:

1) To showcase different implementation approaches for digital health interventions in various settings (e.g., child healthcare, childcare, and the community).

2) To present various implementation and effectiveness outcomes of digital health interventions in the early years.

3) To describe the strengths and limitations of different implementation approaches.

Summary: The chair will provide a summary of the research field in digital childhood obesity prevention and health promotion interventions in the first 2000 days of life, focusing on implementation and scalability (10 minutes). Each presenter will have 10 minutes to present their work, followed by 5 minutes for questions. Presenter 1 will describe the effectiveness and implementation of a digital dietary intervention in the first 1000 days of life in a community setting in co-creation with stakeholders. Utilizing various study designs, presenter 2 will describe a promising mHealth obesity prevention intervention in pre-school aged children from efficacy to large-scale implementation in primary child healthcare. Study 3 will describe the development of a user informed, stakeholder involved program to promote 24-hour movement behaviours in toddlers. The discussant will utilize her expertise in children’s health behaviours and behaviour change interventions to moderate the general discussion (20 minutes) between presenters and delegates.

Format:

1) Brief introduction: Chair, Associate Professor Christine Delisle Nyström (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden)

2) Presenter 1: Professor Nina Cecilie Øverby (University of Agder, Norway)

3) Presenter 2: Associate Professor Christine Delisle Nyström (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden)

4) Presenter 3: Dr. Katherine Downing (Deakin University, Australia)

5) Discussant: Professor Jess Haines (University of Guelph, Canada)

Speaker