Study protocol: can a school gardening intervention improve children's diets?

BACKGROUND: The current academic literature suggests there is a potential for using gardening as a tool to improve children's fruit and vegetable intake. This study is two parallel randomised controlled trials (RCT) devised to evaluate the school gardening programme of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Campaign for School Gardening, to determine if it has an effect on children's fruit and vegetable intake. METHOD/DESIGN: Trial One will consist of 26 schools; these schools will be randomised into two groups, one to receive the intensive intervention as "Partner Schools" and the other to receive the less intensive intervention as "Associate Schools". Trial Two will consist of 32 schools; these schools will be randomised into either the less intensive intervention "Associate Schools" or a comparison group with delayed intervention. Baseline data collection will be collected using a 24-hour food diary (CADET) to collect data on dietary intake and a questionnaire exploring children's knowledge and attitudes towards fruit and vegetables. A process measures questionnaire will be used to assess each school's gardening activities. DISCUSSION: The results from these trials will provide information on the impact of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening on children's fruit and vegetable intake. The evaluation will provide valuable information for designing future research in primary school children's diets and school based interventions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN11396528

Evaluation of the impact of a school gardening intervention on children's fruit and vegetable intake: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Current academic literature suggests that school gardening programmes can provide an interactive environment with the potential to change children’s fruit and vegetable intake. This is the first cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) designed to evaluate whether a school gardening programme can have an effect on children’s fruit and vegetable intake. Methods: The trial included children from 23 schools; these schools were randomised into two groups, one to receive the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)-led intervention and the other to receive the less involved Teacher-led intervention. A 24-hour food diary (CADET) was used to collect baseline and follow-up dietary intake 18 months apart. Questionnaires were also administered to evaluate the intervention implementation. Results: A total of 641 children completed the trial with a mean age of 8.1 years (95% CI: 8.0, 8.4). The unadjusted results from multilevel regression analysis revealed that for combined daily fruit and vegetable intake the Teacher-led group had a higher daily mean change of 8 g (95% CI: −19, 36) compared to the RHS-led group -32 g (95% CI: −60, −3). However, after adjusting for possible confounders this difference was not significant (intervention effect: −40 g, 95% CI: −88, 1; p = 0.06). The adjusted analysis of process measures identified that if schools improved their gardening score by 3 levels (a measure of school gardening involvement - the scale has 6 levels from 0 ‘no garden’ to 5 ‘community involvement’), irrespective of group allocation, children had, on average, a daily increase of 81 g of fruit and vegetable intake (95% CI: 0, 163; p = 0.05) compared to schools that had no change in gardening score. Conclusions: This study is the first cluster randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate a school gardening intervention. The results have found very little evidence to support the claims that school gardening alone can improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake. However, when a gardening intervention is implemented at a high level within the school it may improve children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake by a portion. Improving children’s fruit and vegetable intake remains a challenging task

Informing the design of a national screening and treatment programme for chronic viral hepatitis in primary care: qualitative study of at-risk immigrant communities and healthcare professionals

n Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedThis paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under the Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1209-10038).

The weakest link: competence and prestige as constraints to referral by isolated nurses in rural Niger

BACKGROUND: For a health district to function referral from health centres to district hospitals is critical. In many developing countries referral systems perform well below expectations. Niger is not an exception in this matter. Beyond obvious problems of cost and access this study shows to what extent the behaviour of the health worker in its interaction with the patient can be a barrier of its own. METHODS: Information was triangulated from three sources in two rural districts in Niger: first, 46 semi-structured interviews with health centre nurses; second, 42 focus group discussions with an average of 12 participants – patients, relatives of patients and others; third, 231 semi-structured interviews with referred patients. RESULTS: Passive patients without 'voice' reinforce authoritarian attitudes of health centre staff. The latter appear reluctant to refer because they see little added value in referral and fear loss of power and prestige. As a result staff communicates poorly and show little eagerness to convince reluctant patients and families to accept referral proposals. CONCLUSIONS: Diminishing referral costs and distance barriers is not enough to correct failing referral systems. There is also a need for investment in district hospitals to make referrals visibly worthwhile and for professional upgrading of the human resources at the first contact level, so as to allow for more effective referral patterns

Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups

BACKGROUND: Conventional systematic review techniques have limitations when the aim of a review is to construct a critical analysis of a complex body of literature. This article offers a reflexive account of an attempt to conduct an interpretive review of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups in the UK METHODS: This project involved the development and use of the method of Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS). This approach is sensitised to the processes of conventional systematic review methodology and draws on recent advances in methods for interpretive synthesis. RESULTS: Many analyses of equity of access have rested on measures of utilisation of health services, but these are problematic both methodologically and conceptually. A more useful means of understanding access is offered by the synthetic construct of candidacy. Candidacy describes how people's eligibility for healthcare is determined between themselves and health services. It is a continually negotiated property of individuals, subject to multiple influences arising both from people and their social contexts and from macro-level influences on allocation of resources and configuration of services. Health services are continually constituting and seeking to define the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention, while at the same time people are engaged in constituting and defining what they understand to be the appropriate objects of medical attention and intervention. Access represents a dynamic interplay between these simultaneous, iterative and mutually reinforcing processes. By attending to how vulnerabilities arise in relation to candidacy, the phenomenon of access can be better understood, and more appropriate recommendations made for policy, practice and future research. DISCUSSION: By innovating with existing methods for interpretive synthesis, it was possible to produce not only new methods for conducting what we have termed critical interpretive synthesis, but also a new theoretical conceptualisation of access to healthcare. This theoretical account of access is distinct from models already extant in the literature, and is the result of combining diverse constructs and evidence into a coherent whole. Both the method and the model should be evaluated in other contexts

Strong HIV-1-Specific T Cell Responses in HIV-1-Exposed Uninfected Infants and Neonates Revealed after Regulatory T Cell Removal

BACKGROUND: In utero transmission of HIV-1 occurs on average in only 3%–15% of HIV-1-exposed neonates born to mothers not on antiretroviral drug therapy. Thus, despite potential exposure, the majority of infants remain uninfected. Weak HIV-1-specific T-cell responses have been detected in children exposed to HIV-1, and potentially contribute to protection against infection. We, and others, have recently shown that the removal of CD4(+)CD25(+) T-regulatory (Treg) cells can reveal strong HIV-1 specific T-cell responses in some HIV-1 infected adults. Here, we hypothesized that Treg cells could suppress HIV-1-specific immune responses in young children. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We studied two cohorts of children. The first group included HIV-1-exposed-uninfected (EU) as well as unexposed (UNEX) neonates. The second group comprised HIV-1-infected and HIV-1-EU children. We quantified the frequency of Treg cells, T-cell activation, and cell-mediated immune responses. We detected high levels of CD4(+)CD25(+)CD127(−) Treg cells and low levels of CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell activation in the cord blood of the EU neonates. We observed HIV-1-specific T cell immune responses in all of the children exposed to the virus. These T-cell responses were not seen in the cord blood of control HIV-1 unexposed neonates. Moreover, the depletion of CD4(+)CD25(+) Treg cells from the cord blood of EU newborns strikingly augmented both CD4(+) and CD8(+) HIV-1-specific immune responses. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides new evidence that EU infants can mount strong HIV-1-specific T cell responses, and that in utero CD4(+)CD25(+) T-regulatory cells may be contributing to the lack of vertical transmission by reducing T cell activation