Funding outcome

The physical, social, and cognitive abilities developed during the early years (0-4 years) remain with children for the rest of their lives. To strengthen healthy development during this critical period, we developed 24-Hour Movement Guidelines. Unfortunately, our recent Early Movers longitudinal study in a large and diverse sample of Edmonton infants found that guideline adherence is low across demographic groups, impacting overall development. Therefore, early intervention is needed. We will adapt an established Australian intervention to increase guideline adherence in Alberta. This study will pilot the Early Movers intervention and examine feasibility and acceptability. To address study objectives, we will use a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design. We will partner with Alberta Health Services (AHS) to enroll a sample of 60 parents with infants. The intervention group will receive an educational resource from public health nurses at their 2-month immunization appointment. They will also receive follow-up support via an app. The app includes an online toolkit. The app will send weekly supportive phone messages until 6-month follow-up. The control group will receive standard care. We will track participation, retention, and data completion (parental questionnaire at 2, 4, 6 months of age) rates as well as app usage. We will also conduct interviews with public health nurses and intervention group parents at 6-month follow-up. Finally, we will use statistical tests to describe the data and other analyses to explore themes of our interview data. The Early Movers intervention has the potential to support healthy infant development in Alberta and beyond. Findings will inform future research, including larger trials that examine the success of the intervention in improving guideline adherence and development as well as the maintenance of behaviour change. Overall, findings of this work will be informative to our large network of knowledge users.