Development and feasibility testing of an interactive educational programme to facilitate Proactive Assessment of Obesity Risk during Infancy (ProAsk) 

Children who are above healthy weight are more likely to be ill and absent from school. Most overweight children become overweight adults and being overweight in childhood can also sow the seeds for health problems in later life, including heart disease and diabetes.

One solution is to try to prevent children becoming overweight by intervening very early in life. The risk factors for childhood obesity are known and this project aims to facilitate parents' (and other carers’) understanding of this and to enable them to access intervention for their infant. 

This research project involves UK health visitors (public health nurses) using the interactive, multimedia ProAsk programme with parents to calculate their infant's risk of obesity and discuss appropriate strategies for risk reduction. Health visitors will be trained to communicate obesity risk and in motivational interviewing techniques so they can offer intervention to parents of infants identified as at risk.

A feasibility study of ProAsk is taking place in two health provider organisations in the UK. The purpose of this is to determine the acceptability and usefulness of the ProAsk intervention with health visitors and parents, as well as to gather information to inform the trial design and data collection procedures for a future randomised controlled trial.

Read more about this project.