A case study of a pre-school child who gained too much weight-Version1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A case study of the care of a pre-school child who gained too much weight and living in the London Borough of Hackney
IRAS ID
153225
Contact name
Pauline Sham Peng Tong
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
City University London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 11 days
Research summary
The complexity of the obesity problem plays a pivotal role as to why health visitors working in Hackney are meeting an increasing number of children who are gaining too much weight.The case study will help analyse and clarify the circumstances as to how and why a child gained too much weight within weeks of her/his birth. In addition it will help explore the reasons as to why she/he continued to gain too much weight during a time when her/his parents were accessing professional services to promote healthy weights for her/him.
Health visitors working in the north of Hackney will be asked to nominate children from their caseloads. Through purposeful sampling methodology the first 10 nominated children who meet the inclusion criteria will identified as potential candidates for the research. From this sample the first child whose parents agree to participate and proceed in the research will be selected for the case study. Descriptive data (e.g. child’s weights) will be collected from the child’s health visiting records. Qualitative information will be obtained by interviewing the child’s parents/carers and professionals. The recruitment of participants and data collection will be over a three month period after ethics approval has been granted.
The findings could help professionals provide more needs-led and effective services for the child. Further, the findings may be applied to some extent to some other children from similar background and may contribute in enhancing the health visiting remit in the prevention of early childhood obesity. The case study will be an initial exploratory research on childhood obesity for the purpose of generating a hypothesis which will be rigorously tested in the chief investigator’s subsequent research.The study is part of the chief investigator’s MPhil/PhD which is being funded by her employer, Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
REC name
London - City & East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/0202
Date of REC Opinion
19 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion