In this article, published in May 2023 in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, we explore how human-centered design and participatory approaches were used in three focus groups to develop the Live 5-2-1-0 App. Focus group one provided design input and identified key themes including the importance to parents of the app developing an inner drive in their children to embrace healthy behaviours. Focus group two facilitated co-creation, identifying desired features such as gamification, goal setting, and family-based rewards. HCPs also emphasized the importance of behaviour assessments at the start of app use and the ability to track behaviour change progress. Finally, parents and children in focus group three tested the prototype, ensuring user-friendly navigation and achievable challenges. Valuable suggestions were also gathered to sustain interest and enhance motivation for healthy behaviour change. Our study demonstrates the value of co-creating a mobile health app with the intended audience of the app. Future research will focus on clinical implementation and the examination of the effectiveness of the Live 5-2-1-0 App for promoting healthy behaviours in children.

In this paper, published in BMC Public Health on Oct. 20th, 2022, we analyzed the effectiveness of utilizing two nudge interventions to encourage produce purchases in a rural Canadian grocery store. A pre- and post-intervention observational study design was used. The two nudge interventions included: (1) grocery cart dividers to encourage shoppers to fill one-third of their cart with produce and (2) grocery cart plaques with information about how many fruits and vegetables were typically purchased in the store. The two nudge interventions were staggered. Produce sales increased by 5% after the implementation of both nudges. Additionally, between the implementation of nudge (1) to nudge (2), produce sales increased by 8%. Our study demonstrates that nudge interventions can be a feasible, relatively low-cost strategy to promote fruit and vegetable purchases, without negatively impacting total sales in a locally owned food business. It also highlights that grocery stores are one example of a private sector setting that can have a positive role in creating a healthier environment for local residents.

In this paper, published in JMIR Publications in the Jan-Mar 2022 issue, we describe the systematic review we conducted to assess the effectiveness of mobile apps for promoting health behaviours (changes in diet, physical activity, or sedentary behaviour) in children aged 8 to 12 years. This review provides a key part of the evidence base for the Live 5-2-1-0 App. The paper concluded that health promotion app use in children has the potential to increase the adoption of healthy behaviours and improve related outcomes, “significant improvements in physical activity (4/8, 50% studies), dietary outcomes (5/6, 83% studies), and BMI (2/6, 33% studies) were reported." However, further investigation via rigorously designed, longer-term studies, as well as by those examining mobile apps as standalone interventions, are needed. We hope to address these gaps in the literature when evaluating the effectiveness of the Live 5-2-1-0 App in the coming years.

In this paper published in the July-August 2020 issue of the BC Medical Journal, we present findings from our evaluation of the Live 5-2-1-0 Toolkit for Family Physicians piloted in two communities. We present the barriers and aids to implementing the toolkit in addition to discussing the toolkit’s effectiveness in improving family physicians’ capacity to promote healthy childhood behaviours to pediatric patients in primary care settings.

Our paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) in March 2019, describes how RE-FRAME, a newly developed knowledge exchange model, enabled the effective and sustainable scale-up of Live 5-2-1-0 to new communities and facilitated community capacity building in both new and existing Live 5-2-1-0 communities. This paper is a follow-up to our initial wayfinding paper published in the IJERPH in 2016

In this paper, published in Obesity Reviews in May 2018, we address the gap in existing information on multi-setting, community-based childhood obesity prevention interventions by closely examining how various interventions implemented around the world have evaluated their impact. This paper systematically reviews the methodological approaches to outcome evaluation used in 33 different studies, discusses persistent challenges in evaluation, and suggests a set of pragmatic recommendations for future community childhood obesity interventions and studies.

In this paper, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in June 2016, we describe the protocol for implementing and evaluating an innovative knowledge translation model (RE-FRAME) in two existing and two new Live 5-2-1-0 communities to understand how to facilitate and sustain systems/community-level change.

Based on our experiences growing the Live 5-2-1-0 initiative, we published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Public Health’s September/October 2015 issue that describes how we support communities to drive change and help local children eat well and be active every day. We also describe the best practice processes that emerged from our experiences and how they align with the Collective Impact model. Taken together, we demonstrate a path forward for similar community-led initiatives in the future.

In this study published in a special edition of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, we describe community perspectives on, and elicit feedback about, SCOPE’s first phase of implementation in two pilot cities in BC. Using interviews and questionnaires to obtain feedback about SCOPE from two groups: SCOPE coordinators and stakeholders (i.e., individuals and organizations that were a member of the community and engaged with SCOPE coordinators) we share their perspectives on factors that facilitated and acted as barriers to SCOPE’s first phase of implementation.