Targeting physical activity and nutrition interventions towards mothers with young children: a review on components that contribute to attendance and effectiveness

Abstract

Objective: To gain insight into intervention components targeted specifically to mothers of young children that may contribute to attendance and effectiveness on physical activity and healthy eating. Design: Systematic literature searches were performed using MEDLINE, Embase and cited references. Articles were included if they evaluated the effectiveness of a lifestyle intervention to promote physical activity and/or healthy eating in an experimental design among mothers with young children (age 0-5 years). Data were extracted on study characteristics, intervention components targeted towards mothers with young children, attendance and effectiveness. Extracted data were analysed in a descriptive manner. Results: Eleven articles describing twelve interventions met the inclusion criteria. Of the six studies that measured attendance, two reported high attendance. Embedding the intervention within routine visits to child health clinics seems to increase attendance. Three studies found significant effects on physical activity and three on healthy eating. Effective interventions directed at physical activity included components such as counselling on mother-specific barriers or community involvement in intervention development and implementation. One of the three interventions that effectively increased healthy eating had components targeted at mothers (i.e. used targeted motivational appeals). Conclusions: The number of experimental intervention studies for promoting physical activity and healthy eating among new mothers is limited. However, useful first recommendations can be set for targeting interventions towards mothers, in particular for promoting attendance and physical activity. More insight is required about the need for targeting health promotion programmes at new mothers, especially of those directed at nutritional behaviour. Keywords Physical activity Healthy eating Weight change Interventions MothersFollow-up studies among adults show that weight gain in young women is, on average, relatively large compared with older women (1)(2)(3) . Excessive weight gain during pregnancy, failure to lose weight in an appreciable period of time postpartum and weight gain during the postpartum period may well partly explain this weight gain among young women (4)(5)(6) . New mothers are more likely to gain weight than young adult women without children (7) . In addition, longitudinal studies have shown that postpartum weight retention predicts overweight in the long term (4,5) . Therefore, promoting weight control among new mothers is valuable in obesity prevention.A decrease in physical activity during the transition into motherhood may explain the higher increase in weight gain among new mothers compared with non-mothers. A meta-analysis showed that mothers were less likely to be physically active than fathers and non-parents (8) . In particular, mothers of young children (under the age of 5 years) seem to be at risk for physical inactivity (9,10) . Changes in nutritional behaviour before and after pregnancy are...

Key concepts in consumer and community engagement: a scoping meta-review

“…Community members might, for example, be encouraged to participate in more physical activities to improve their wellbeing [30,31] or to participate in notification and control of infections [32,33]. More information is needed to support the efficacy of current approaches in increasing community participation [30].…”

Physical activity and nutrition intervention for mothers of young children: Process evaluation

“…A pilot research project in playgroups conducted by the researchers [30], along with formative data [10] informed the development of the program, indicating that the home based component should be the main focus of the intervention, as all the resources that were provided could be used by the women independently at home at a suitable time. The home-based program especially the flagship booklet were all reported to be useful and were well received by the women.…”

“…Workshops can be problematic, especially with this target group, as attendance can decline over time due to competing priorities [10]. Attendance of mothers at the workshops did drop off throughout the program with 82% of mothers attending in the first month, while in the sixth month only 51% attended.…”

“…Attendance of mothers at the workshops did drop off throughout the program with 82% of mothers attending in the first month, while in the sixth month only 51% attended. The relatively short timeframe during playgroup meetings, and the need to attend to children are recognised as barriers to regular workshop attendance [10,31,32].…”

“…However, 96% of females aged 25 -34 years and 94% aged 35 -44 years fail to meet these guidelines [6].success in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and levels of physical activity among mothers with young children [8,9]. However, the recruitment and retention of participants into community based interventions are challenging due to the increased demands on these women, which include limited time and competing priorities [10].…”