But it’s tricky for governments and healthcare providers to know the best way to help. With around one in five young Australian children affected by overweight and obesity, do parents want more support to help their kids exercise? What about healthy eating? Or maybe wellbeing programs?
New research surveyed 466 Australian parents and caregivers directly to learn their preferences.
“It’s really important we understand what parents and caregivers want when we’re designing and implementing programs to improve the health of children,” says Dr Vicki Brown, Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics at Deakin University’s Institute for Health Transformation.
“In the context of preventing overweight and obesity in children, our new study found that the top preference for parents are initiatives supporting them in healthier diets.”
“Lower down on the priority list were initiatives resulting in healthier physical activity behaviours, wellbeing and healthy growth,” Dr Brown says.
“When we asked about costs, parents and caregivers preferred less costly, universal child healthy lifestyle initiatives but did show awareness that decisions about prioritising different programs have to be made in healthcare.”
Preventing overweight and obesity can have a positive impact on health not only when kids are little but throughout their development and adulthood. Health programs tackling childhood obesity can also present a large cost saving for public health systems through preventing development of chronic conditions such as diabetes, stroke and cardiac disease later in life.
“Our next phase of research is focused on understanding childhood health initiatives from the perspective of decision makers, including federal, state and local government officials,” Dr Brown says.
“We’re working towards being able to provide healthcare decision-makers with online, interactive decision support tools which bring together all of the evidence regarding what we know works, how and for who.”
“When we can align parental preferences with the rollout of policies and programs, that’s when we’re likely to see real impact in preventing childhood overweight and obesity,” says Dr Brown.
With co-authors from University of Sydney and Australian National University, the new study is published with open access in the journal Paediatric Obesity.
Support our research
Childhood is a critical window for supporting lifelong health. Continued investment in preventive health research is vital to grow the evidence base and support high-quality evaluation, economic analysis, and the translation of research into scalable policies and programs that promote equity, guide policy decisions, and improve long-term outcomes for children and their communities. To continue this important work, more funding is required to support researchers in testing and scaling up initiatives that deliver real-world health benefits and align with community values. Reach out to Dr Vicki Brown if you would like to discuss further how we could work together to improve health, equity and wellbeing for everyone.
Read more about Dr Vicki Brown’s research
Read the research paper titled: Preferences and willingness to pay for early childhood healthy lifestyle initiative outcomes: A discrete choice experiment
