Supporting a healthy lifestyle in young children and their families – Preferences of parents concerning intervention strategies (Project METAHEALTH)
Theme: Personalizing care
Type of research (qualitative empirical, quantitative empirical, mixed-method): Qualitative empirical
Description:
Overweight and dental caries are two highly prevalent, co-occurring health conditions in preschool children. In the Netherlands, 15% of 4-year-olds are diagnosed as overweight (RIVM, 2021) and only 34% of 0-4-year-olds have visited a dentist (Verlinden, Schuller, Vermaire, & Reijneveld, 2023). These conditions set the children on a path to poor overall physical and mental health, severely impacting their quality of life (Halberstadt et al., 2023; Zaror et al., 2022). In addition, childhood overweight and caries contribute to socio-economic inequalities and can therefore be seen as societal issues since individuals with a lower socio-economic position are at greater risk of developing and maintaining these conditions and vice versa (Halberstadt et al., 2023; Zaror et al., 2022). Many interventions, both digital and non-digital, already exist to combat this issue and support a healthier lifestyle in the general as well as low socio-economic populations reporting limited support. This graduation project is situated within the larger METAHEALTH project and contributes to this overall goal.
To combat the health inequalities, the METAHEALTH project aims to create and evaluate digital and blended interventions aimed at preventing obesity and oral diseases in the first 1000 days of life with an emphasis on families living in vulnerable conditions.
This assignment aims to investigate the context of families in the general population in which the interventions are applied. Therefore, a qualitative interview study will be carried out providing input on families' 1. everyday lives, 2. possible barriers and facilitators of implementation, and 3. their preferences concerning interventions.