Learning from, and scaling up, a digital health intervention for infants

What is the issue?

Childhood obesity is one of the most significant public health issues globally. Introduction to evidence-based feeding practices early in life (0-2 years) is crucial to promote healthy weight trajectories and help develop lifelong healthy eating behaviours. International and national infant feeding guidelines exist, however, such recommendations are met by less than 10% of the Australian population.

Typically, children are around 7 months old when mothers return to work, a time associated with breastfeeding cessation and a critical phase for infant nutrition and growth. Outside the home, childcare centres are the primary settings where food is provided and consumed by young children.

Effective and scalable nutrition interventions, such as those delivered digitally, in childcare can therefore support families with establishing evidence-based feeding practices while ensuring consistent nutrition messages across feeding environments.

How is the project addressing the issue?

The Tiny Bites program supports parents, carers, and childcare services in implementing the Australian Infant Feeding Guidelines and recommended infant feeding practices. Tiny Bites is a collaboration between Deakin University and Hunter New England Population Health and is currently being run as a research trial with childcare centres and parents in the Hunter New England region.

The trial will assess the effectiveness of a digital health intervention including a web platform for childcare providers, and text messages with online resources for parents. The objective is to provide childcare educators and parents with timely evidence-based nutrition support for young children aged 0-2 years. The trial intends to recruit 60 childcare centres and 540 children across the Hunter New England region.

What are the expected outcomes?

This initiative was developed to address the needs of parents, childcare providers and health promotion teams for timely and evidence-based nutrition support for young children.

The Tiny Bites program has been designed with scalability in mind and if found effective has strong potential for rapid adoption by partners. This could have a direct influence on service provision models in NSW.

To ensure translation and impact, the project team will conduct workshops with health and community consumers to identify pathways for sharing or scaling up the project in other states and territories.

Funding acknowledgement

This research is funded by the Medical Research Future Fund and conducted by Deakin University in partnership with the University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Population Health, and the University of Queensland (Grow and Go team). The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre is providing in-kind support.