A realist evaluation of the iHV Healthy Weight and Nutrition Programme
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Prevention of childhood overweight and obesity in children from birth to five years: a realist evaluation of the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition programme.
IRAS ID
295262
Contact name
Adenike Omotayo
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 15 days
Research summary
In 2015, the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) trained 300 Health Visitors (HVs) across the UK due to evidence that HVs have less confidence in having conversations with parents and carers about their children’s weight.
Since the trainings were delivered, there has been little, or no progress made with having the Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition (HWHN) conversations across the UK. Also, overweight and obesity in children under 5 years old continue to increase across the country, with one in ten children under 5 years old and one in five children in Year 6 obese in the UK.
The aim of this research is to find out if the HWHN training programme provided to HVs across the country, help them in their work with families.
This is being explored through the viewpoints of HV champions that have had the original or adapted HWHN training, and parents who have experienced health visiting input. This research will give parents the opportunity to express their thoughts on how the programme worked for their families and the support they received from the Health Visitors. This will be explored through what has worked, how it has worked, for whom and in what context.
The participants are purposefully selected due to the specificity of the programme being evaluated and the case site was chosen as this is the only site currently implementing the HWHN programme.
Health visitors and parents/carers will be interviewed virtually due to ongoing pandemic for participant’s safety. To develop the interview questions, local parents/carers of children under 5 are being asked to help in planning my questions.
Consent will be sought, and all interviews will be recorded on encrypted devices and the recurrent themes will be extracted and discussed in detail.REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/WM/0232
Date of REC Opinion
11 Nov 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion