Leveraging ecological momentary assessment to understand variability in food parenting practices within a low-income racially/ethnically diverse sample of parents of preschoolers.

Children's eating behaviors are shaped significantly by their home food environment, including exposure to food parenting practices. The current study leveraged ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to describe how food parenting practices used to feed preschoolers (n = 116) differed across contextual factors around eating, including type of eating occasion (i.e., meals vs. snacks), day of the week (i.e., weekend vs. weekday), who initiated the meal (parent vs. child), emotional climate of the eating occasion. Parent perceptions of how well the eating occasion went, including how well the child ate and whether the food parenting practices worked as intended were also explored. Parent use of specific food parenting practices, situated within four higher-order domains (i.e., structure, autonomy support, coercive control, indulgent), was found to differ by type of eating occasion; parents engaged in a higher proportion of structure practices at meals than at snacks. Use of specific food parenting practices differed by mealtime emotional climate; parent use of structure and autonomy support was associated with eating occasions described as relaxed, enjoyable, neutral, and fun. Finally, parent perception of how well the child ate differed by use of specific food parenting practices; during eating occasions when parent's felt their child ate "not enough", they used less autonomy support and more coercive control compared to eating occasions where the child ate "enough and a good balance." Leveraging EMA allowed for increased understanding of the variability in food parenting practices and contextual factors. Findings may be utilized to inform the development of larger-scale studies seeking to understand why parents choose specific approaches to feeding their children, as well as the impact of various approaches to child feeding on child health outcomes.

Medical care utilization as a function of recovery status following chemical addictions treatment.

A sample of 3,572 chemical dependency inpatients aged 25 to 82 years were the subjects of a study to evaluate whether observed reductions in health care costs are associated with successful recovery from alcoholism and other drug dependence, a function of regression to the mean, or ancillary health care during alcoholism/drug abuse treatment. The total number of hospital days were calculated for the year prior to treatment, and one and two years post-treatment. Utilization rates are not significantly different between recovering and relapsed patients prior to treatment; however, the differences between the two groups for the first and second year post-treatment are significant. The recovery patients showed a continued low utilization rate while the relapsed group had considerably higher utilization in both years. Recovery status is an essential factor to consider when determining valid cost-offsets for medical care utilization after alcoholism/drug abuse treatment.