A cluster randomised trial of a telephone-based intervention for parents to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in their 3- to 5-year-old children: study protocol

The study, conducted in the Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia, employs a cluster randomised controlled trial design. Two hundred parents from 15 randomly selected preschools will be randomised to receive the intervention, which consists of print resources and four weekly 30-minute telephone support calls delivered by trained telephone interviewers. The calls will assist parents to increase the availability and accessibility of fruit and vegetables in the home, create supportive family eating routines and role-model fruit and vegetable consumption. A further two hundred parents will be randomly allocated to the control group and will receive printed nutrition information only. The primary outcome of the trial will be the change in the child's consumption of fruit and vegetables as measured by the fruit and vegetable subscale of the Children's Dietary Questionnaire. Pre-intervention and post-intervention parent surveys will be administered over the telephone. Baseline surveys will occur one to two weeks prior to intervention delivery, with follow-up data collection calls occurring two, six, 12 and 18 months following baseline data collection.If effective, this telephone-based intervention may represent a promising public health strategy to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in childhood and reduce the risk of subsequent chronic disease.Australian Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12609000820202Inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption contributes to a variety of chronic diseases and is estimated to be responsible for 2.6 million deaths per year worldwide [1]. A substantial proportion of adults [2,3] and children [4] from developed countries, including Australia [5,6], consume insufficient quantities of fruit and vegetables. The 2002 World Health Report estimated that 4% of the disease burden in developed countries was attributable to low fruit and vegetable intake [7]. Increasing consumption in early childhood may be an effective strategy to reduce the ri