Nurturing Care Family Navigator

Summary

The goal of this pilot randomized controlled trial is to determine whether a 6-month behavioral health intervention with a Nurturing Care Family Navigator (NCFN) improves levels of food security among postpartum low-income Medicaid or uninsured women identified as having very low or low food security in the past 12 months. We hypothesize that a behavioral health intervention applying a multisectoral nurturing care navigation approach facilitating access to health, nutrition, early learning, responsive care, and security and safety resources is likely to decrease levels of maternal-child food insecurity. The main question it aims to answer is:

* Does the behavioral health intervention with a Nurturing Care Family Navigator (NCFN) improves levels of food security? Outcome 1: Improve levels of food security
* Does the behavioral health intervention with a Nurturing Care Family Navigator (NCFN) increase knowledge to navigate barriers across the four pillars of food insecurity? Outcome 2: Increase knowledge across the four pillars of food insecurity
* Does the behavioral health intervention with a Nurturing Care Family Navigator (NCFN) increase self-efficacy to secure and sustain enrollment with community nurturing care services? Outcome 3: Increase self-efficacy to secure and sustain enrollment with community nurturing care services

Researchers will compare levels of food security among those receiving a navigation behavioral health intervention (consisted of 1:1 tailored navigation session and an educational workbook) compared to those receiving an educational workbook with messages across the four pillars of food insecurity (standard of care).

Participants will:

* Engage in intense weekly navigation 1:1 tailored session for 3 months
* Engage in follow up monthly navigation 1:1 tailored session for 3 months
* Participate in evaluation calls with a research assistant at enrollment, 3, 6, 12 months

Conditions

• Food Insecurity Among Children
• Food Insecurity in Post Partum Women
• Care Coordination in Primary Care
• Preventive Care / Anticipatory Guidance
• Retention in Care

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Nurturing Care Family Navigator

The Nurturing Care Family Navigator (NCFN) is a comprehensive barrier-focused and long-term family-centered intervention that will offer screenings for food insecurity, referrals to community resources, and follow-up with families experiencing very low or low food security in the past 12 months. The goal of the NCFN is to increase knowledge (cognitive factors) and self-efficacy (behavioral factors) to navigate barriers across the four pillars of food insecurity by securing enrollment and sustaining engagement with a set of community nurturing care services (environmental factors) to improve levels of food security, and ultimately maternal-child health and nutrition outcomes of low-income families during the postpartum phase.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-03-10

Primary Completion

2027-01-30

Completion

2027-05-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations