Kansas City Brain Builders: associations between a multisectoral community language nutrition intervention and change in practices and growth in child language over two years

Background and objectives Health literacy in adulthood plays a major role in an individual’s ability to use health information to benefit their health. Social determinants in early childhood initiate the development of health literacy through newborn brain development and oral language acquisition. Both of these processes are promoted by stimulation from everyday interactions with parents/caregivers at home and in the community. Unequal access to language-learning opportunities during early childhood represents a modifiable developmental and social determinant of later educational and health outcomes. There are inequities in these time-sensitive interactions—specifically language-learning opportunities—across families in the population, which are social determinants of early literacy, achievement in school, and later-life education, health, and economic and social well-being across the life span. This gap is most pronounced among children who grow up in poverty in the United States and internationally. The healthcare system in the United States effectively reaches to nearly all infants; however, language-learning opportunities are not a focus during well-child visits. The term “Language Nutrition” (LN) was coined in prior research to refer to these developmentally rich interactions known to support brain and language growth in children younger than preschool age. We developed Kansas City Brain Builders (KCBB) to address this inequity by promoting LN broadly among families and children in a community so that all children have a more equitable home language environment. The purpose of this study is to report longitudinal empirical findings on families and children related to the implementation of KCBB, a public health approach to community change, over 2 years. Methods The evaluation involved two parallel longitudinal studies: the Community study and the Family study. The Community study assessed the implementation of a KCBB multisectoral community partnership to promote LN-friendly changes in local programs, practices, and policies. The Family study involved longitudinal assessments of a sample of 83 English- and Spanish-speaking families with children younger than 36 months of age, evaluating the KCBB impacts on parental behaviors and child growth in language skills. Results KCBB led to a high level of documented program implementation and substantial LN promotion throughout the community. Repeated parent assessments indicated that participants had received LN messages from multiple community sectors over time, increased their knowledge of the importance of LN, and used LN through storybook reading, verbal responsiveness, and teaching behaviors during interactions with their children. Growth in children’s early language skills was significantly associated with the amount of LN they received. Discussion/Conclusion KCBB is one of the few multisectoral interventions designed to promote community-wide change targeting LN. It is a manualized intervention that can be replicated by other communities. This study employed three levels of measurement such that change could be evaluated in a theoretical framework of influence from community engagement to parental behavior and growth in child language skills. Findings provide preliminary evidence that a multisectoral community approach can achieve broad reach and is associated with changes in caregiver practices and child language growth. Larger, controlled, and replicated studies are needed to establish causal effects and determine whether such approaches reduce disparities in language-learning opportunities.