The Development of VegEze: Smartphone App to Increase Vegetable Consumption in Australian Adults (Preprint)

Abstract

Background

Evaluation of a long day care intervention targeting the mealtime environment and curriculum to increase children’s vegetable intake: a cluster randomised controlled trial using the multiphase optimisation strategy framework

“…Although there are limited studies investigating the impact of LDC interventions on TDF domains of knowledge and skills for educators and cooks, findings from these studies suggest that improving knowledge and skills may not necessarily translate to improvements in children's dietary intake in the short term. Nonetheless, scalable interventions that increase educators' knowledge and skills in vegetable-related practices and/or teaching are valuable, and it is possible that continued intervention implementation and thus greater exposure for children to evidence-based practices (28) may lead to increases in children's usual vegetable intake. The pragmatic online self-delivered intervention approach, including real-world dissemination strategies used in the present study, was shown to be feasible and acceptable for adoption by Australian LDC centres and educators nationally.…”

“…The intervention consisted of two initiatives targeting the Mealtime environment and the Curriculum (19) , developed based on the Best Practice Guidelines for Increasing Children's Vegetable Intake in the Early Years (28) and draw on evidence for effective strategies for increasing vegetable intake and acceptance in the early years from a recent umbrella review (13) . The intervention was delivered online whereby at the beginning of the 12-week study period centre management were provided with a website link and instructions for accessing the initiatives via email.…”

Application of the multiphase optimisation strategy to develop, optimise and evaluate the effectiveness of a multicomponent initiative package to increase 2-to-5-year-old children’s vegetable intake in long day care centres: a study protocol

“…Three initiatives will be developed which draw on evidence for effective strategies for increasing vegetable intake and acceptance in the early years30 44 and align with best practice guidelines for increasing vegetable intake in LDC, which recommend multilevel and multicomponent interventions that combine strategies targeting children and the centre environment32 41 (table 1). The target audience of the initiatives will be children, educators and cooks.…”

“…This study will be delivered and evaluated online, with all measures self-completed by participating centres using online data collection instruments. This approach will support centres to monitor their own progress towards increasing children’s vegetable intake, which will align the initiative package with Best Practice Guidelines 32 41. Data will be collected at baseline and 12 weeks.…”

“…Further, providing training and embedding interventions into everyday routines of the childcare centre is likely to improve the sustainability of interventions 30. Best practice guidelines for designing interventions to increase children’s vegetable intake emphasise the need for multilevel and multicomponent interventions, which target both individuals and the environment, have more than one target audience (ie, educators, children), target vegetables (ie, rather than healthy eating) and are of sufficient intensity and duration (at least 6 weeks duration, with weekly participant contact) 32 41. Accordingly, a multicomponent intervention with a strong vegetable focus, which combines strategies that target children, such as education and hands-on sensory experiences, with strategies targeting educators, cooks and the centre environment to support regular and repeated exposure to vegetables, is needed to produce optimum results for increasing vegetable intake in young children 30…”