PROmoting Early Childhood Outside (PRO-ECO)

Summary

Licensed early learning and childcare centres (ELCCs) can provide children with rich opportunities for outdoor play that they may not otherwise experience in their home or community. However, many ELCCs struggle to provide high quality and stimulating outdoor play time. The primary aim of our study is to develop, implement and test a comprehensive multi-component intervention, the PROmoting Early Childhood Outside (PRO-ECO), to build capacity for, and address the complexities of building support for outdoor play in early childcare centre settings. This is to ultimately increase children's access to engaging outdoor spaces for play.

Our overarching goal is to develop and evaluate a comprehensive multi-component intervention, called the PROmoting Early Childhood Outside (PRO-ECO). This intervention is to increase children's outdoor play and the diversity of outdoor play behaviour in Canadian ELCC settings providing full-day licensed care for preschoolers. The PRO-ECO integrates development of policies and procedure, early childhood educator (ECE) training and mentorship, outdoor space modifications and, parent/caregiver engagement.

The PRO-ECO intervention will be co-developed, implemented and evaluated in partnership with the YMCA of Greater Vancouver (YMCAGV). A wait-list control cluster randomised trial design (RCT) will evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention and how it can be modified to tackle barriers in diverse settings.

Conditions

• Child Development

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Intervention Group - PRO-ECO Intervention

The PRO-ECO intervention will be tailored to individual sites. Through collection of focus group and baseline data, the intervention will be further refined to provide site-specific adjustments, such as specific materials in the built environment design modification or targeted training. Identified features of effective interventions outlined in the literature have informed the development of the intervention foundation and potential tailoring.

BEHAVIORAL

Wait List Group - Normal Daily Practice

ELCCs that are randomly assigned to the waitlist group will participate in their normal daily practice, including standard curriculum and outdoor play time. Once post-data collection is complete, wait list sites will be given the PRO-ECO intervention.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The Lawson Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• University of British Columbia

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Mariana Brussoni · University of British Columbia

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

30 Months

Max Age

99 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-01-01

Primary Completion

2022-12-06

Completion

2023-06-06

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations