P2B282: Tasting with Tots: Infant Mental Health Intervention Promoting Healthy Family Dynamics Around Eating and Feeding in Toddlers

Background: Denver Health has long been an active provider of MEND (Mind Exercise Nutrition Do it!), an evidence based multidisciplinary family-centered intervention for kids aged 5-15. In practical application, and echoed by the obesity treatment guidelines for children released by the AAP, we identified a need to provide effective programming for younger children within a pediatric FQHC. With the support of a community cooking grant and broader Healthy World programming, our team developed an innovative approach to family-centered toddler eating and feeding support. The goals of the project were to increase families' capacity around cooking with and feeding their children, and support toddlers with picky eating. Throughout our work with families, we identified that an integrated medical and Infant Mental Health perspective was necessary in supporting families in the complex dynamic that can be toddler feeding.

Methods: We offer a 6-week course of family-centered cooking classes for babies who eat solid food through age five. During the classes, we offer brief consultation with a family medicine provider, infant mental health specialist, and a health coach. All consultations occur in the context of the cooking class, where families are encouraged to guide their toddlers through a child-friendly recipe from the Cooking Matters materials, with support from staff.

We assess parental stress around eating and feeding, parental competence in offering healthy meals, and parents' perceptions of their relationship with their child. We are building standardized assessment using the Infant and Child Feeding Questionnaire (ICFQ) and data around the frequency of food intake from various food groups, which we hope to roll out in the future as part of a curriculum expansion within our system.

Results: We have completed 146 visits since September 2022. Family feedback indicates this intervention reduces stress around feeding, has increased parents’ capacity for healthy relationships with their children, and helps to increase acceptance of new foods by children. We have documented the ancillary benefit of increased connections to food resources (i.e. WIC), Early Intervention programs, parental mental health supports, linkage to primary care, preschool programs, community activities and resources, and childcare options.

We will present additional data on the demographics and completion rates of our participants, as well as data from the ICFQ, MEND questionnaires, and parent assessments.

Conclusion: The addition of family-centered, group-based programming to address parental feeding concerns and increase parental capacity around cooking and bonding with their toddler-aged children has proven to be a successful model in our FQHC-based pediatric clinic. Families and pediatric medical providers have expressed satisfaction with the program and its ability to impact parent-child feeding relationships. The added benefit of using food and cooking as a natural vehicle to promote healthy parent-child relationships, healthy eating behaviors, and connect to community resources has been indispensable.