Using a social marketing approach to develop Healthy Me, Healthy We: a nutrition and physical activity intervention in early care and education

Although social marketing principles have been successfully employed in school-based interventions to prevent obesity, use in early care and education (ECE) settings has been limited. This paper describes the use of the social marketing approach to develop an ECE-based intervention that encourages an ECE provider-parent partnership to improve the quality of preschool children's diets and their level of physical activity. A six-step social marketing approach for public health interventions guided the development of this ECE-based intervention. These steps were as follows: (i) initial planning, (ii) formative research, (iii) strategy development, (iv) program development, (v) implementation, and (vi) monitoring and evaluation. During this process, we reviewed current literature, conducted focus groups with ECE providers and parents, developed a detailed conceptual model and content map, created and tested the campaign concept, and developed final campaign materials along with strategies for its implementation. The final intervention resulting from this process was an 8-month campaign known as Healthy Me, Healthy We. The campaign is delivered by the child care center and includes branded materials for use in the classroom and at home. The final campaign is being evaluated in a cluster-randomized trial. Healthy Me, Healthy We offers an innovative approach to promoting healthy eating and physical activity during early childhood, a key developmental period, that leverages partnership between ECE providers and parents to affect behavior change.