Evaluation of a Childhood Obesity Prevention Online Training Certificate Program for Community Family Educators

Abstract

Community family educators have the opportunity to incorporate childhood obesity prevention concepts in their programming with families of young children, but often lack formal health and nutrition education. The purpose of this feasibility study was to create an online training certificate program for community family educators and assess the program's effectiveness at improving participant's knowledge, attitudes, and intended and actual behaviors related to healthy lifestyles. Community family educators (n = 68) completed an online pretest, viewed 13 brief videos (8-15 min) focused on childhood obesity related topics and took mini-knowledge self-checks after each video followed by an online posttest. At posttest, paired t tests showed participants' childhood obesity prevention related knowledge (i.e., nutrition, physical activity, screen time and sleep) improved significantly (p < 0.001). Participants' attitudes toward parenting behaviors related to feeding practices, family meals, physical activity, screen time control and parent modeling significantly (p < 0.05) improved. Improvements also were seen in participants' intentions to promote obesity prevention behaviors (i.e., age appropriate portions sizes, adequate physically active, and parental role modeling). Furthermore, changes in personal health behaviors at posttest revealed participants had significantly (p < 0.05) greater dietary restraint, improvements in sleep quality, and reductions of use of electronic devices during meals and snacks. Overall, participants were very satisfied with the training program, felt comfortable with skills acquired, and enjoyed the program. Findings suggest this online training program is a feasible and effective method for improving community family educators' knowledge, attitudes, and intentions for obesity-prevention related parenting practices.

USDA Research Combats Childhood Obesity: A Collection of Projects that Integrate Research, Education, and Extension Targeting Low-Income, Ethnically Diverse Children and Families

“…AFRI COP funding supported university level training such as the Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention (TOP) graduate certificate program 20 and an online training certificate program for community family educators. 21 Although the challenge areas were eliminated and the Childhood Obesity Prevention Program has been sunset and replaced with the Sustainable Agriculture Systems Program, the breadth and depth of the articles in this issue and 550+ previously published significantly added to the childhood obesity prevention literature base. The research produced provides a solid foundation for community-based programming to better understand, address, and assess childhood obesity prevention.…”

Can Distance Education be Closer: A Training Program about Autism

“…In this way, barriers arising from the interaction or communication problems of traditional distance education are reduced (Huang, 2002). In addition, online implementations offer a flexible structure that can remove obstacles such as time and distance (Crawford-Ferre & Wiest, 2012;Eck et al, 2016).…”

The Application of Systems Science in Nutrition-Related Behaviors and Outcomes Implementation Research: A Scoping Review

“…Nutrition interventions describe any combination of strategies designed to motivate and facilitate the adoption of nutrition-related behaviors that encourage health and well-being ( 2 ). Current research shows that nutrition interventions such as i-COOK 4-H ( 8 , 9 ) and Homestyles ( 10 – 13 ), which address childhood nutrition, the GetFRUVED ( 14 , 15 ) intervention that encourages college student health behaviors ( 16 – 27 ), a mental health recovery and nutrition program, M4R2 ( 28 , 29 ), and a culinary medicine educational program to improve health professional nutrition-related knowledge ( 30 – 32 ), can positively support healthy lifestyle changes. Despite the noted positive influences on health and well-being, current reviews evaluating the effectiveness of nutrition interventions on health behaviors have identified areas for improvement in implementation.…”