Scaling up Building Healthy Families in Rural Areas and Small Towns
Evidence-based interventions for childhood obesity (EBI-CO) can improve children's weight status, but families in rural areas and small cities have limited access to the interdisciplinary healthcare teams recommended to deliver EBI-CO. To address this issue, the investigators adapted an EBI-CO, Building Healthy Families (BHF), which includes all materials and training resources necessary for rural program implementation. The pilot study found that when paired with opportunities to learn from the program developers and other community implementation teams, the packaged program led to effective delivery across 4 rural communities. This scale-up study will compare packaged BHF Resources with and without a learning collaborative facilitation strategy, examining outcomes including reach, effectiveness, implementation, and potential for sustainability in rural areas.
⁃ Communities must respond to a call for proposals by submitting a letter of intent and a brief narrative describing the local need for BHF and readiness for implementation. Community eligibility for this trial includes:
• Any community is eligible to apply for the competitive BHF RFA process;
• BHF RFA scoring prioritizes community narratives that meet the following criteria: (1)Childhood obesity prevention and treatment are a priority health concern; (2) Communities and community-based organizations located in rural, frontier, or micropolitan areas, and/or that provide services to families from these areas; (3) Communities and community-based organizations that provide services or reach families in other low-resource contexts, such as areas with limited access to evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention/treatment interventions.
• The community is willing to be randomized to either study condition.
• The community is willing to form a Community Implementation Team (CIT) to implement BHF.
⁃ Eligibility for Community Implementation Teams (CIT) includes:
• Adults, age 18 years or older
• Employed by or affiliated with the community-based organizations that applied and were selected through the bundled adoption strategy (i.e., LOI/RFA) process.
⁃ BHF Program Family Eligibility:
• Must have at least one child between the ages of 5 and 13 years with a BMI at or above the 85th percentile;
• One parent or caregiver must agree to attend BHF sessions with the child.