Talking is Teaching: Results from a Community Health Intervention

Background: Research demonstrates that infancy and early childhood are critical times of brain development and vocabulary acquisition which contribute to later academic performance, health and well-being.  Studies also show that early quality engagement among primary caregivers and infants and young children form important lasting bonds and promote brain development and vocabulary acquisition.  A two-pronged intervention –  a community wide campaign and a provider intervention within a community healthcare center --  tests the effectiveness of efforts to help parents talk, read and sing to their infants and toddlers.  Both efforts include use of multiple high quality, attractive creative items, including children’s clothing, books, tool kits and media messaging.

Methods: This mixed method evaluation utilizes key informant interviews, focus groups, surveys/interviews of parents and collection of analytics regarding numbers of billboard and commercial views, website hits, etc., to assess the impact of the community campaign and provider intervention.  In addition to measuring the impact on parent’s knowledge and behavior, the evaluation seeks to understand which messages and creative products are most effective.  Specifically, the evaluation seeks the impact of each major campaign components: trusted messengers, environmental prompts and tools to facilitate change.

Results: The evaluation will not be completed until summer 2015.  Results will include qualitative findings from the key informant interviews and focus groups and quantitative analysis of the parent interviews/surveys and the analytics.  Early findings suggest strong favorable reactions to the creative items.  Their high quality and usefulness cause parents to feel valued and have motivated parents to talk, read and sing to their children.  Providers are also enthusiastic about the creative and the books as they provide effective tools for communicating that talking is teaching.  Final results, which will presented quantitatively and qualitatively, will demonstrate overall impact of the efforts as well as the relative impact of specific components. 

Conclusions:  The evaluation findings will provide important insight into the effectiveness of the overall campaign and the individual components, including messages, messengers and creative materials.  This information will inform others who are interested in programs intended to support infant and child development and influence long term health and well being.