Communities for Healthy Living: A Holistic Approach to Engaging Head Start Families to Improve Health Outcomes

Abstract

The Communities for Healthy Living (CHL) project is a five year, pragmatic intervention trial to reduce and prevent childhood obesity among low-income preschoolers in the Greater Boston area. This workshop will demonstrate the successes and challenges of engaging parents as participants and leaders of a participatory intervention to prevent childhood obesity. Key lessons learned; give insight on how staff and parents were engaged from the outset; and what this type of program can offer diverse groups of parents. With a particular focus on the participatory nature of our work, we will describe the stages of our trial and discuss the current status of the project. Presenters will outline how CHL differs from other childhood obesity prevention trials, and place emphasis on their parent health and empowerment program – the keystone to the project. The presenters will lead the group in several activities taken directly from the parent program, to illustrate how parents of varying backgrounds and literacy levels can be engaged around health topics.