Delormier, Treena PhD

Research Overview

2014-2015 RMATRIX Collaboration Pilot Projects Program Awards

Project Description

Abstract

Childhood obesity is a major public health crisis, yet remains a complex issue with few effective treatment and prevention strategies. Addressing the multiple levels of influences implicated in obesity presents enormous challenges, as does understanding the pathways by which upstream social factors make their impact downstream and culminate into behaviors and their health effects. Knowledge of how social factors operate in the context of people’s daily lives may help identify ways to intervene so social factors that lead to health promoting practices are enabled, and health damaging ones discouraged. This research will examine patterns of food choice practices in families with children clinically identified as obese and demonstrate how the family social context reinforces predominant food choice routines. We will collect data on family food practices using in-depth face-to-face conversational style interviews with approximately 20 families recruited through the Wai’anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center. We will analyze the family accounts of their food choices using Food Choice Practice Framework (FCPF) (Delormier et al., 2009), which the PI developed in an Indigenous community in Canada. Data collected using the Framework is linked to mapping techniques that integrate community-level perspectives into the analysis, which deepens collective understanding of how social contextual features operate in the communities where the participants live. Although this Framework is recognized internationally and worked well in Canada, the pilot will test its applicability in characterizing routine family food choices practices and identifying socially structured rules (norms and meanings) and resources related to food choices in Wai’anae.