Perceptions of nursery staff and parent views of healthy eating promotion in preschool settings: an exploratory qualitative study

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Background:
In the UK just over a fifth of all children start school overweight or obese and overweight 2–5 year olds are at least 4 times more likely to become overweight adults. This can lead to serious future health problems. The WHO have recently highlighted the preschool years as a critical time for obesity prevention, and have recommended preschools as an ideal setting for intervention. However, existing evidence suggests that the preschool environment, including the knowledge, beliefs and practices of preschool staff and parents of young children attending nurseries can be a barrier to the successful implementation of healthy eating interventions in this setting.

Methods:
This study examined the perceptions of preschool centre staff and parents’ of preschool children of healthy eating promotion within preschool settings. The participants were preschool staff working in private and local authority preschool centres in the North East of England, and parents of preschool children aged 3–4 years. Preschool staff participated in semi-structured interviews (n = 16 female, 1 male). Parents completed a mapping activity interview (n = 14 mothers, 1 father). Thematic analysis was applied to interpret the findings.

Results:
Complex communication issues surrounding preschool centre dietary ‘rules’ were apparent. The staff were keen to promote healthy eating to families and felt that parents needed ‘education’ and ‘help’. The staff emphasised that school policies prohibited providing children with sugary or fatty snacks such as crisps, cakes, sweets and ‘fizzy’ drinks, however, some preschool centres appeared to have difficulty enforcing such guidelines. Parents were open to the idea of healthy eating promotion in preschool settings but were wary of being ‘told what to do’ and being thought of as ‘bad parents’.

Conclusions:
There is a need to further explore nursery staff members’ personal perceptions of health and how food policies which promote healthier food in preschool settings can be embedded and implemented. Family friendly healthy eating strategies and activities which utilise nudge theory should be developed and delivered in a manner that is sensitive to parents’ concerns. Preschool settings may offer an opportunity for delivery of such activities.

Keywords:
Preschool children, Nursery schools, Preschools, Parents, Obesity, Healthy eating, Policy implementation, Health promotion, Qualitative

Autoři: Lorraine A. Mcsweeney ^1*; Tim Rapley ²; Carolyn D. Summerbell ³; Catherine A. Haighton ²; Ashley J. Adamson ¹
Působiště autorů: Institute of Health & Society, Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. ¹; Institute of Health & Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. ²; School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, Durham University, Durham, UK. ³
Vyšlo v časopise: BMC Public Health 2016, 16:841
Kategorie: Research article
prolekare.web.journal.doi_sk: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3507-x

© 2016 The Author(s).

Open access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-016-3507-x

Souhrn

Keywords:
Preschool children, Nursery schools, Preschools, Parents, Obesity, Healthy eating, Policy implementation, Health promotion, Qualitative

Zdroje

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