BMC Public Health · 14 authors, 9 centres
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This two-year cohort study evaluated a community coalition intervention in Somerville, MA, designed to increase knowledge and engagement among stakeholders for early childhood obesity prevention. The central result was a significant increase in knowledge and engagement among coalition members and their professional networks, which was associated with improvements in community policies, systems, and environments supporting prevention.
This study followed a community coalition (N=16) and their network contacts (n=193) over two years to assess the effects of a Stakeholder-driven Community Diffusion intervention on early childhood obesity prevention. Data on knowledge, engagement, and social network diffusion were collected at five timepoints. Significant increases were found in knowledge (p=0.0002) and engagement (p=0.03) among committee members, and in knowledge within the committee's social network (p=0.001). Significant improvements in policies, systems, and environments (PSE) supporting prevention were reported from baseline to 24 months (p=0.003). Limitations include the lack of a comparison group, a predominantly white and highly educated sample, and reliance on perceived rather than objective measures of PSE change. The findings suggest that upstream changes in stakeholder knowledge and engagement can diffuse through networks and may lead to midstream community-level changes.
