Integration of Preventive Health into Parenting Classes

Abstract

Background: Health behaviours develop from childhood into adolescence and adulthood, and most chronic diseases can be prevented by healthy early environmental factors. Incorporating information about chronic disease and strategies for risk reduction into parenting curricula could have positive effects on the environmental risk that children are exposed to and the health promoting behaviours that children acquire from their parents. This qualitative, formative study seeks to describe attitudes toward, and barriers and facilitators of, integrating preventive health education into parenting classes. As a pilot project, a preventive health curriculum was designed to be incorporated into parenting classes at the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4), a community organization that provided evidence-based services to decrease the incidence of child abuse and neglect in Chicago.