The dyadic FirstStep2Health intervention for parent-child dyads
| Component | Purpose | Description |
| Daycare-based child programme | Increase knowledge and skill on healthy eating and physical activity | Children received weekly, age-appropriate, participatory learning sessions delivered by trained interventionists on mindful eating (learning/tasting fruits/vegetables using five senses) and physical activity (practising fun animal movements and activity games including yoga stretching movements and relaxing breathing activities). The programme included two sessions per week, and each session lasted about 20 min. |
| Child letters | Connect school learning with home practice | Each week, children created two letters using stickers regarding a food or activity presented in the daycare-based programme that they liked or wanted to try at home. Letters were sent privately to each parent via Facebook messenger or text messaging every Wednesday and Friday. Parents were encouraged to discuss letters with their children and offer foods and activities desired by children. Parents were also asked to answer two Facebook multiple-choice questions related to the letters each week by Sunday midnight: (a) What foods listed in your child’s letter did you provide? (b) What activities listed in your child’s letter did your family try? |
| Social media-based parent programme | Foster a healthier home environment | Provided parents a weekly electronically retrievable flyer containing health information, family fun activities and behavioural change strategies to help create a healthier home environment and encouraged interactive positive communication to promote peer support. Parents were asked to post a message or a picture on healthy eating and physical activity, positively respond to other parents’ postings and complete a two-question quiz each week to reinforce information and strategies learnt in the weekly flyer. |
| Parent group meetings | Promote behavioural change strategies | Three virtual meetings via Zoom at weeks 1, 8 and 16, each meeting lasted about an hour. Meeting 1: programme orientation, healthy cooking. Meeting 2: MyPlate plates, food labels, smart shopping. Meeting 3: programme overview, community healthy eating and PA resources (eg, farmer’s markets, community gardens, nearby parks or other free or affordable PA facilities). |
| Motivational text messages | Increase parental motivation | Every week, three motivational text messages were sent at noon on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to focus on parenting/family and lifestyle changes. For example, “If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves”. |
PA, physical activity.