The impact of active stakeholder involvement on recruitment, retention and engagement of schools, children and their families in the cluster randomised controlled trial of the Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP): a school-based intervention to prevent obesity
dc.contributor.author | Lloyd, J | |
dc.contributor.author | McHugh, C | |
dc.contributor.author | Minton, J | |
dc.contributor.author | Eke, H | |
dc.contributor.author | Wyatt, K | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2017-09-27T10:13:53Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2017-08-14 | |
dc.description.abstract | BACKGROUND: Recruitment and retention of participants is crucial for statistical power and internal and external validity and participant engagement is essential for behaviour change. However, many school-based interventions focus on programme content rather than the building of supportive relationships with all participants and tend to employ specific standalone strategies, such as incentives, to improve retention. We believe that actively involving stakeholders in both intervention and trial design improves recruitment and retention and increases the chances of creating an effective intervention. METHODS: The Healthy Lifestyles Programme, HeLP (an obesity prevention programme for children 9-10 years old) was developed using intervention mapping and involved extensive stakeholder involvement in both the design of the trial and the intervention to ensure that: (i) delivery methods were suitably engaging, (ii) deliverers had the necessary skills and qualities to build relationships and (iii) the intervention dovetailed with the National Curriculum. HeLP was a year-long intervention consisting of 4 multi-component phases using a range of delivery methods. We recruited 1324 children from 32 schools from the South West of England to a cluster-randomised controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of HeLP in preventing obesity. The primary outcome was change in body mass index standard deviation score (BMI SDS) at 24 months post randomisation. Secondary outcomes included additional anthropometric and behavioural (physical activity and diet) measures at 18 and 24 months. RESULTS: Anthropometric and behavioural measures were taken in 99%, 96% and 94% of children at baseline, 18 and 24 months, respectively, with no differential follow up between the control and intervention groups at each time point. All children participated in the programme and 92% of children and 77% of parents across the socio-economic spectrum were considered to have actively engaged with HeLP. CONCLUSIONS: We attribute our excellent retention and engagement results to the high level of stakeholder involvement in both trial and intervention design, the building of relationships using appropriate personnel and creative delivery methods that are accessible to children and their families across the social spectrum. TRIAL REGISTRATION: International Standard Randomised Controlled Trials Register, ISRCTN15811706 . Registered on 1 May 2012. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | The UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research Programme (10/3010/01) funded all research activities for the HeLP RCT. The costs of the intervention were funded by the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 18, article 378 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1186/s13063-017-2122-1 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/29562 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | BioMed Central | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28807006 | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s). 2017. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. | en_GB |
dc.subject | Child | en_GB |
dc.subject | Cluster RCT | en_GB |
dc.subject | Complex intervention | en_GB |
dc.subject | Engagement | en_GB |
dc.subject | Obesity prevention | en_GB |
dc.subject | Recruitment | en_GB |
dc.subject | Retention | en_GB |
dc.subject | School | en_GB |
dc.subject | Stakeholder involvement | en_GB |
dc.title | The impact of active stakeholder involvement on recruitment, retention and engagement of schools, children and their families in the cluster randomised controlled trial of the Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP): a school-based intervention to prevent obesity | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2017-09-27T10:13:53Z | |
exeter.place-of-publication | England | en_GB |
dc.description | This is the final version of the article. Available from BioMed Central via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Trials | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s). 2017. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.