About the program

Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads aims to enhance the health and wellbeing of parents and their pre-school aged children through the development of effective parenting skills. The program also educates and motivates dads and their youngsters to improve their physical activity level and nutrition practices.

Program structure

Dads and youngsters sessions (75 minutes)

Dads and youngsters spend quality time together participating in 8-weekly fun, engaging and educational activities that are beneficial to mental and physical health. Each week has 2 main components:

• A 20-minute session which introduces the weekly theme. Themes include:
  • rough and tumble play
  • vegetables
  • physical activity
  • fruit
  • screens
  • water
  • sport skills
  • a summary component.
• A 55-minute practical session focused on 3 key areas:
  • rough and tumble play
  • fundamental movement skills
  • fun fitness.

For further information visit the Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads website.

Dad’s only sessions

Fathers also attend 2 additional 2-hour ‘dad’s only’ sessions. These sessions aim to teach parenting strategies to help dads improve:

• their child’s sport skills
• dietary behaviour
• physical activity levels
• social emotional wellbeing.

Fathers are also taught about how to engage in positive lifestyle role modelling to optimise their family’s health.

Evaluation and effectiveness

A randomised controlled trial (Morgan et al. 2014) was conducted in Australia with 125 fathers and their children (61 intervention, 64 control). Results showed that the HYHD program increased the step count of children in the intervention group when compared to the control group. This result was sustained at the 9-month follow up. There were also significant intervention effects for secondary outcomes including fathers’ physical activity levels, children’s fundamental movement skill proficiency, and several parenting constructs.

Significant intervention effects were seen for fathers’ physical activity at the 10-week follow-up point, however not at the 9-month follow up. There were no significant differences between the intervention and control groups for fathers’ self-reported MVPA or fathers’ and children’s LPA or MVPA, co-physical activity, screen time and adiposity measures. High levels of satisfaction, attendance and retention and fidelity were also reported.

Several other evaluations of the HYHD program have been conducted including a community-based dissemination trial testing the program’s replicability (Ashton et al. 2024). In the trial, positive outcomes were found for fathers’ physical activity, screentime, dietary intake and positive parenting practices. For children, positive outcomes were found for screentime and dietary intake.

A selection of published evaluation articles is included below. For a more comprehensive list, please refer to the program’s website.

References

Ashton, L.M., Grounds, J.A., Barnes, A.T., Pollock, E.R., Young, M.D., Kennedy, A-L., Rayward, A.T., Lee. D.R., & Morgan, P.J. (2024). Replicability, adaptability and long-term impact of the ‘Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads’ program in Newcastle, Australia. Health Promotion International 39(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daae095

Ashton, L.M., Morgan, P.J., Grounds, J.A., Young, M.D., Rayward, A.T., Barnes, A.T., Pollock, E.R., Kennedy, S-L., Saunders, K.L., & Collins, C.E., (2021). Dietary outcomes of the ‘Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads’ randomised controlled trial. Nutrients 13(10), 3306. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13103306

Morgan, P.J., Grounds, J.A., Ashton, L.M., Collins, C.E., Barnes, A.T., Pollock, E.R., Kennedy, S-L., Rayward, A.T., Saunders, K.L., Drew, R.J., & Young, M.D. (2022). Impact of the ‘Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads’ program on physical activity and other health behaviours: a randomised controlled trial involving fathers and their pre-school aged children. BMC Public Health, 22(1), 1166. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13424-1