Sensitive and constructive help
Professor Cris Glazebrook, Professor of Health Psychology in The University of Nottingham’s School of Medicine, said: “More than one in three children in the UK are overweight by the time they start school. We believe that our digital tool will help health visitors to identify babies who are most at risk and to communicate that risk to parents in a sensitive and constructive way.”
ProAsk, developed by the Health e-Learning and Media (HELM) group based in the School of Health Sciences
at Nottingham, asks parents and carers a set of questions that are
based on identified risk factors such as parental weight and lifestyle
during pregnancy, baby’s birth weight and growth which research has
shown increase the risk of a baby becoming overweight as they get older.
During
home visits health visitors will ask parents to enter this information
into the programme which will be delivered via a tablet computer. The
study will examine whether parents and carers find ProAsk helpful and
whether health visitors can use the results to tailor their advice to
parents and to explore possible ways to help keep their babies at a
healthy weight.
Sarah Redsell,
Professor of Public Health at Anglia Ruskin, is the principal
investigator for the study. She said: “Children who are above a healthy
weight are more likely to be ill and have time off school. Being very
overweight in childhood can also sow the seeds for health problems in
later life such as heart disease and diabetes.
“One
approach is to try and intervene early in life. The information we get
from this study will help us understand whether or not parents/carers
would like to know about this risk, and if so whether health visitors
can work with them to help them understand how they might lower the risk
for their baby.”
The project will be carried out in Nottingham and Cambridgeshire and will see Nottingham City Care Partnership and Cambridge Community Services
working with Anglia Ruskin together with the Universities of
Nottingham, Lincoln and Cambridge on the 18-month study, which is funded
by the Medical Research Council.