Highlights
Very significant effects on health and well-being from the COVID-19 virus and the associated lockdown.
As of July 19th, 1,753 people have died and 25,766 have tested positive with the virus.
Raid growth in new cases and deaths in the first six weeks of the pandemic.
Subsequent fall in cases and deaths until late July.
Generally a very high level of compliance with public health measures.
Objective:
Early-life nutrition plays a key role in establishing healthy lifestyles and preventing chronic disease. This study aimed to (1) explore healthcare professionals’ (HCP) opinions on the acceptability of and factors influencing the delivery of interventions to promote healthy infant feeding behaviours within primary care and (2) identify proposed barriers/enablers to delivering such interventions during vaccination visits, to inform the development of a childhood obesity prevention intervention.
Design:
A qualitative study design was employed using semi-structured telephone interviews. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis; findings were also mapped to the Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA).
Setting:
Primary care in Ireland
Participants:
Twenty-one primary care-based HCP: five practice nurses, seven general practitioners, three public health nurses, three community dietitians and three community medical officers.
Results:
The acceptability of delivering interventions to promote healthy infant feeding within primary care is influenced by the availability of resources, HCP’s roles and priorities, and factors relating to communication and relationships between HCP and parents. Proposed barriers and enablers to delivering interventions within vaccination visits include time constraints v. opportunistic access, existing relationships and trust between parents and practice nurses, and potential communication issues. Barriers/enablers mapped to TFA constructs of Affective Attitude, Perceived Effectiveness and Self-Efficacy.
Conclusions:
This study provides a valuable insight into HCP perspectives of delivering prevention-focused infant feeding interventions within primary care settings. While promising, factors such as coordination and clarity of HCP roles and resource allocation need to be addressed to ensure acceptability of interventions to HCP involved in delivery.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.