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The problem
Intervention: Starting Early Program (StEP), a nutrition promotion program designed to promote healthy nutrition during early life
Who it was tested with: 377 mother-infant dyads enrolled in a randomized trial.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"Dietary patterns at 10 months were identified using latent class analysis. Child weights were abstracted from medical records at 12, 24, and 36 months. Associations between infant dietary patterns and weight-for-age z-score (WFAz) and likelihood of being classified as overweight (WFA ≥85th percentile) were assessed using linear and logistic multivariable regression models. Mediation was used to assess intervention effects on WFAz via impacts on infant dietary patterns." The study used a randomized trial design with prospective weight measurement and statistical mediation analysis to examine the pathway through which the StEP program influenced child weight outcomes.
As a secondary analysis, this study identifies associations rather than causal effects of dietary patterns on weight. The mediation analysis cannot prove that dietary patterns caused the weight differences, only that they are consistent with a pathway through which StEP works.
Across countries and designs
2 studies · 2 countries
