Lead by Dr Alice Grady, this study sought to better understand the reporting of scalability factors within published studies of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) healthy eating interventions.
The findings reveal a significant shortfall in reporting of key scalability factors, particularly the areas of intervention cost, sustainability, and fidelity.
Future research should prioritise comprehensive reporting of scalability factors to provide policymakers and practitioners with essential information to inform decision-making when considering interventions for scale-up.
What did we do?
Using data from a recently published Cochrane systematic review examining the effectiveness of ECEC-based healthy eating interventions, we evaluated the reporting of factors essential for intervention scalability. We employed the Intervention Scalability Assessment Tool (ISAT), which outlines crucial domains for scale-up decision-making: the problem, the intervention, strategic and political context, effectiveness, costs, fidelity and adaptation, reach and acceptability, delivery setting and workforce, implementation infrastructure, and sustainability.
