Parkdale Infant Nutrition Security Targeted Evaluation Project: Focus Groups & Interviews

In Toronto Ontario, the Parkdale Community Health Centre operates a community outreach program entitled Parkdale Parents' Primary Prevention Project (5P's). The 5P's provides weekly pre- and post-natal support and education programs for clients. This includes an infant feeding program for mothers with infants 0-6 months (Feeding Tiny Souls). The 5P's has a diverse client-base; the program is aimed at women who are in challenging life circumstances, therefore, clients may include low-income or single mothers and newcomers to Canada.

The overall goal of this research is to optimize the existing 5P's program. Program acceptability is an essential component of the process evaluation to understand the experiences of mothers and the perceived supports and barriers of the program. Specifically, the aim of this project is twofold: 1) to investigate the perceptions and experiences of accessibility of a postnatal community program and 2) to explore the perceptions of, and attitudes toward, a community infant feeding program offering lactation consultant and breast pump resources. This study will use a qualitative approach by way of semi-structured focus groups and interviews. The study population will consist of women who enrolled in 5P's prenatally and have delivered their infant. This will include women who did and did not continue to participate in the postnatal program and/or Feeding Tiny Souls after delivery. The investigators will specifically seek women who participated in the prenatal program, but did not take part in the postnatal program and/or Feeding Tiny Souls to understand why participants did not access these resources and gather information on their views of these postnatal program components. The hypothesis is that the postnatal community program is a source of support for clients, but that it needs to be expanded to include more clients and the infant feeding program is an important support for helping clients to provide breast milk to their infant.