Growing Healthy Hearts

Growing Healthy Hearts: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Multicomponent Gardening Intervention for Adults With Cardiovascular Disease Risk and Their Families.

This proposal includes a prospective, parallel group, two-arm RCT with 264 adult-child dyads (adult age 18+, child ages 5-17 years) to examine the effectiveness of the Growing Healthy Hearts (GHH) intervention versus a wait list control on cardiovascular and behavioral health outcomes at 3-, 6- and 12-months follow-up (Aim 1). This proposal will also examine the effect of GHH on home fruit and vegetable (FV) availability, frequency of home-prepared meals that include FV, and child behaviors (FV intake and PA) at 3-, 6- and 12-month follow-up (Aim 2) and intervention implementation (Aim 3)

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adults aged 18 or older who are interested in gardening but have no plans to garden in the coming season.
• Participants will also be required to: 1) have at least one child (aged 5-17) living in the household with them
• Have access to space for a garden (either at home or in a community garden space where they could plant any combination of in-ground, raised beds, and/or container gardens
• Have a smartphone capable of downloading an app and syncing with a Fitbit
• Access to the internet
• Have or are willing to create a Facebook account
• Report ≤90 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity /week
• Report <5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day
• Have any one additional self-reported CVD risk factor (e.g., BMI ≥25, family history of premature CVD, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, current or past tobacco use)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Adults who are pregnant
• Have medical conditions that significantly limit an individual's ability to participate in gardening (e.g., knee or back pain, heart attack/stroke in the past year, recent or pending surgeries
• Uncontrolled allergies, other serious physical disabilities, uncontrolled asthma)
• Medical conditions that may limit participants from increasing FV intake (e.g., kidney failure or dialysis)