Interventions to promote healthy environments in family child care homes in Oklahoma—Happy Healthy Homes: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

摘要

BackgroundEarly childhood is a critical period of development. Caregivers, including providers of early care and education (ECE), have a substantial influence on the health of young children. Family child care homes (FCCHs), which are small, licensed ECE businesses operated out of the residences of providers, are important settings for promoting child health. However, to date, few interventions to promote the health of children have been developed for FCCHs. The purpose of this article is to describe the protocol for Happy Healthy Homes, a pilot interdisciplinary, community-based study to improve FCCH environments and the health of children in Oklahoma. We describe the development and evaluation of two interventions to be tested in a matched attention randomized controlled trial: 1) a nutrition intervention aimed at enhancing the nutritional quality of meals served to young children, incorporating the Child and Adult Care Food Program best practices, and improving nutritional self-efficacy of providers; and 2) an environmental intervention aimed at increasing providers’ environmental health literacy, self-efficacy for integrated pest management (IPM), and awareness of less toxic cleaning practices and FCCH provider cleaning behaviors.