Home-based interventions attempt to involve the entire family in efforts to eat nutritious foods. For example, through interactions between children and parents or guardians, families can help to provide meals and snacks that include nutritious foods. Likewise, the family is a great source of social support for changes in eating patterns (e.g., social acceptance, dietary restrictions).
Home-based interventions are most effective when links to interventions in other settings are established:
- Community-based (e.g., encourage families to advocate for legislation to minimize air pollution)
- School-based (e.g., educate parents on how to support their children by increasing their self-confidence in their ability to manage their asthma)
- Worksite-based (e.g., provide flex-time policies at work so that people have time to spend with their families offering education and support)
- Faith-based (e.g., increase outreach to families in the faith-based community and improve access to information about asthma through faith-based affiliations)
- Health care-based (e.g., encourage trained health care providers to provide tailored feedback to patients on how to manage their asthma)
Before You Begin…
There are a number of planning steps that lead to a variety of specific intervention strategies. For assistance with these planning steps, use the navigation bar at the end of this page. Intervention MICA provides you with tools to help you:
- Create a partnership with other individuals, groups and organizations within your community.
- Learn about your readiness to plan your intervention (readiness and preparation).
- Work on your organizational or community capacity, budget, funding sources, social determinants of health, or cultural competence (capacity).
- Prepare your evaluation in order to figure out how to measure the success of your intervention.
- Maintain your momentum through information, tools and resources to assist you in sustaining your partnership and intervention over time.
Below are specific intervention strategies for home-based interventions. If you will be working in other settings (e.g., communities, schools, worksites, faith-based organizations or health care facilities), then you will want to refer to these other settings for more information.
Intervention Strategies
Even though the intervention strategies that may be used are described separately below, each of these strategies is most effective when it is combined with other strategies. For example, changing knowledge, attitudes and beliefs will do little to increase eating behaviors if the parents are not informed about the importance of purchasing and preparing nutritious foods. Similarly, changing knowledge, attitudes and beliefs will not be as effective if families don’t have access to information or resources to help them make nutritious food choices.
It is important to make sure that the intervention strategies are created to represent and address the needs of the Community of Interest. This may include paying attention to how different groups think about different foods and their preparation. Furthermore, an intervention works best when there is an attempt to address language, reading level, and cultural barriers (see Cultural Competence for more information). For information on different populations that have received nutrition interventions, go to Nutrition in Different Populations.
--Increasing knowledge and skills, influencing attitudes and beliefs
Individual Information Exchange intervention strategies have been developed to increase individual knowledge and skills as well as to change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors related to nutrition. More specifically, these interventions may provide personally tailored information about the benefits of eating nutritious foods (e.g., minimizes risk for diabetes, heart disease and other diseases), beliefs about different foods (e.g., whole milk versus skim milk) or food preparation skills (e.g., baking versus frying). Tailored information may take into account the person’s readiness for change or specific interests in order to help them purchase and eat nutritious foods. These interventions are also useful in helping individuals develop skills to seek assistance from others when needed (e.g., transportation to a grocery store with nutritious food choices).
Mass Media Campaigns are interventions that address messages about nutrition to large audiences. The campaigns are designed to increase knowledge as well as influence attitudes and beliefs. Messages are communicated using newspapers, radio, television, posters, pamphlets, brochures, newsletters, videos, direct mail and billboards with generic, untailored information.
Group Education Sessions are interventions focused on provision of information and are delivered through health education classes or group sessions. They provide education and skills related to decision-making and usually have multiple components, including: nutrition and health, food purchases, food preparation, other skill-building techniques, role playing, lectures and information. Health education classes are designed to affect behavior change through personal and behavioral factors that provide participants with the skills they need to make informed decisions. Because of the interactive nature of group settings, participants have the opportunity to learn new information, ask questions, get support from other participants and the facilitator or instructor and practice new skills.
Provider Education Systems are interventions targeting health care providers (doctors, nurses, clinicians, health practitioners) to encourage them to educate their patients regarding the importance of eating nutritious foods. Provider education systems include educating the providers on the importance of talking to their patients, reminding providers to talk to their patients during routine visits and offering feedback to providers regarding their performance in delivering nutrition advice or assistance to patients.
--Providing social support
Supportive Relationships are interventions that build on social or interpersonal relationships (e.g., family members, co-workers, friends, peers, role models) in order to provide a support system for behavior change. This may include increasing the information individuals have about nutritious foods (informational support), the skills and abilities people have to prepare nutritious foods (tangible support) and the sense of acceptance and belonging among people with respect to preparing or eating nutritious foods (appraisal support). Examples of social support strategies include: group discussions, partner support, peer leaders, parent-child interactions or others.
Group Education Sessions (see description above)
Provider Education Systems (see description above)
--Changing public policies and the community environment
Environment and policy initiatives are interventions that attempt to increase access to nutritious foods (increase availability, reduce cost, increase quality, increase variety) and improve food supply factors (e.g., agriculture policy, food production and storage).