UCONN InCHIP Seed grant (MPI Gans with Redford-Badwal)                                                        7/01/16 – 6/30/17

Formative Research to Inform Childhood Obesity and Dental Caries Interventions

This seed grant will conduct formative research to create multi-level interventions for childhood obesity and dental caries prevention in collaboration with dental practices in CT.

the proposed research aims to use mixed methods to collect qualitative and quantitative formative research data from pediatric dental records, dental care providers and low income, ethnically diverse families using an anthropological framework (called syndemics) to inform the development of a behavior change intervention in dental practice to reduce dental caries and childhood obesity using an intervention matching approach. The Specific Aims are as follows:

1. To use the UCONN Pediatric Dental clinics’ electronic health record to examine the prevalence of obesity and dental caries on children (ages 3 to 16) and its association with demographic, clinical and behavioral factors using a syndemics approach.
2. To conduct exploratory qualitative interviews with clinic and community dental providers and exploratory focus groups with families to explore intervention needs/wants and barriers/facilitators to achieving healthful dietary and oral health habits.
3. To conduct a survey with 200 parents of pediatric dental patients (aged 3-16) to further examine the association of dietary behaviors with body mass index (BMI) and caries prevalence and to gather quantitative data to inform intervention development.
4. To use the above mixed methods data in an intervention mapping approach to developing intervention prototypes/descriptions to support oral health professionals in delivering an intervention with families to encourage dietary change, obesity and caries prevention.
5. To conduct the second round of confirmatory qualitative interviews with clinic and community dental providers and focus groups with families to present initial intervention ideas and receive feedback to inform future research.

The mixed methods data that we will collect will inform a future R21 or R34 grant application, which would conduct further formative, feasibility and acceptability research and a randomized pilot trial. That research will, in turn, inform the development of a future R01. Our long-term goal is to create acceptable, effective dietary/obesity prevention interventions that could be widely disseminated into dental practice