Live Well Colorado

To examine the strengths and opportunities for improvement of current home care education practices to inform the development of the Home Care for Heart Health intervention, and to develop a web-based intervention for parents and clinicians with complimentary print materials that could provide the right education at the right time to foster a safer transition from hospital to home. An inter-professional focus group of parents, clinicians, and designers was formed to co-create a home care education intervention for parents of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) and their care team. We used the Integrated New Product Development process model created by Jonathon Cagan and Craig Vogel at Carnegie Mellon University to develop the intervention. This process model is a way of thinking that combines horizontal and inter-disciplinary teams, stakeholder-centric focus, and a system of qualitative discovery and development evolving towards quantitative methods of refinement. Our team developed the Home Care for Heart Health intervention. The evidenced-based intervention includes a quick reference guide for parents of children with CHD, an accompanying app, family-friendly pathways, and clinician education. Using an inter-professional approach, our team of clinicians, parents, and design experts were able to co-create a clinician-parent home care education intervention with broad application and lifelong relevance to the Congenital Heart Disease Community. Our intervention has the potential to be used as a model for other home care education interventions for parents of children with chronic illnesses.

The aim of this commentary is to expand upon results of previously published work on improving nutrition of cafeteria lunches in elementary schools of a high-need school district in southern Colorado, USA, between 2009 and 2015. The intent of the program was to improve the quality of school lunches by training cafeteria staff to prepare meals from scratch using fresh produce and minimally processed proteins as well as to reduce the sodium, sugar, and fat content of the food prepared. The program was successful in improving the quality and nutritional content of school lunch entrees by providing more entrees made from scratch with fresher options and decreasing the amount of processed foods served. This study shows that interventions aimed at changing the food preparation policies of school cafeterias can improve the nutrition of school lunches, and future research should expand on the benefits schools may experience by investing in similar programs.