A Good Start Matters for Parents and Children: an MHealth Parenting Intervention to Promote a Healthy Child Development
Early childhood is an important period where the family can support the development and maintenance of healthy eating and active behaviors to prevent or reduce childhood obesity. With this ultimate goal, we designed the Good Start Matters - Parenting program, which aims to engage families in positive parenting practices that support healthy child behaviors, and aim to evaluate the efficacy of this intervention with a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). The Good Start Matters - Parenting program is a 2-month mobile-Health (mHealth) parenting intervention which promote positive parenting (primary outcome) and support children's healthy nutrition, physical activity, and decrease screen-time (secondary outcomes).
⁃ Children must be:
• Attending a childcare center invited to participate in the Good Start Matters study.
• Older than 2.5 and younger than 6 years
⁃ Parents must:
• Be the primary caregiver/legal guardian of an eligible child OR share childrearing responsibilities with an already enrolled primary caregiver/legal guardian of an eligible child
• Be fluent in English
• Have a cellphone number and smartphone device where they can receive text messages and download and access the app