P0217 - Strengthening and Supporting the Early Prevention and Healthy Lifestyle Promotion Efforts of Pediatric Primary Healthcare Providers: A Strong4Life Program Pilot Study

Background: Increasingly, efforts to address the high prevalence of obesity and chronic disease have begun to focus on early prevention, specifically improving parents' feeding practices, child nutrition, and related lifestyle patterns in infancy and early childhood. As pediatric primary healthcare providers are parents' leading source of early prevention information, efforts to ensure that the educational messages that they convey are evidence-based, well-received by parents, and easily integrated into routine clinic practice are critically needed. The purpose of this pilot project was to assess the feasibility and acceptability to parents and clinicians of using short, age-specific educational videos integrated into the protocol for well-child visits.

Methods: A series of existing, short (1-3 minute) videos on key child feeding and healthy habit promoting topics were identified, one for each of the 12 American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended well-child visits from newborn to 3 years. These were uploaded on to the TIGR (Telephone Initiated Guided Response) video viewing system used in a busy (22 exam rooms), metro area pediatric primary care clinic serving a large low-income, race/ethnically diverse population. From August to December 2019, clinic staff escorting patients to the exam room introduced and started the video on one of the two TIGR lines available, and encouraged parents/caregivers to direct any questions related to the content to their child's provider. A short survey was completed by participating clinic staff and parents and key informant interviews were completed with representatives of the clinic team.

Results: 75 parents attending a well-child visit with their child age newborn to 3 years completed surveys. Of those, 14 were unable to view a video. In most cases, 9/14, this was due to unavailability of video system equipment or line access at the time. Among the 61 who viewed a video, most of whom were parents of infants (85%), 98% reported that they liked it, 88% felt that viewing it while waiting to see the doctor was a good use of their time, 83% thought that the information was "very helpful", 98% were "somewhat" or "very likely" to use the information presented in the video and 64% reported that they would be interested in viewing the same or other videos after leaving the clinic. Clinic staff recognized the limitations of their video system but expressed a desire to continue showing the videos and to work to expand the project to include videos on relevant topics for all well-child visits, newborn to 18 years.


Conclusion: The incorporation of short videos into the well-visit protocol at a busy metropolitan area clinic was positively received by both parents and clinic staff, suggesting an effective strategy for ensuring that key educational messages are consistently and effectively communicated time-limited visits.