GrowWell - Responsive Bottle Feeding

Using Digital Health Technologies to Prevent Obesity Among Infants of Parents Receiving Nutrition Assistance Benefits.

The overall goal of this research is use digital health to augment the clinical encounter with Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinicians and prevent rapid infant weight gain among children living in low-income households. Intervening on weight gain during infancy offers an opportunity to influence lifelong obesity risk. Using personalized motivational messages and targeted skills-training resources, the intervention will support parents and caregivers in adopting responsive feeding strategies. Knowledge gained from this project will be used to develop a future, larger grant submission focused on developing healthy feeding and eating habits among mother-infant dyads.

Assess the feasibility and acceptability of a digital intervention aimed at increasing responsive infant feeding behaviors, beginning 1 month postpartum and continuing through 3-months postpartum, among a prospective cohort of women receiving WIC benefits.

Use qualitative methods to explore barriers and facilitators to participation in a digital infant feeding intervention among women receiving WIC benefits during early postpartum

Inclusion Criteria:

• Aged ≥18 years
• as a smartphone and an email address
• willing to send and receive daily text messages
• can read and write in English
• child is <=6 weeks

Exclusion Criteria:

• participating in in a different research study that, in the opinion of the investigator, would conflict or would otherwise be too problematic if the subject were to participate in this study
• planning to leave North Carolina in the next 6 months
• subjects who do not have the capacity to give legally effective consent
• any medical or congenital condition that would interfere with infant feeding or growth (ie, Down syndrome or cleft lip or palate)