Evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of sleep initiatives to promote infant sleep in the Bloom Study - a multicomponent intervention targeting healthy weight development

The Danish Bloom Study is a home-based multicomponent intervention promoting healthy weight development among infants and toddlers in first time families. The intervention is integrated in the Danish system of community health nurses, and it starts in pregnancy and continues until the child is 2,5 years of age. The Bloom sleep intervention is embedded in the Bloom Study, and the overall aim of my PhD-project is to evaluate the effectiveness and the implementation of the Bloom sleep intervention until the children are one year of age.

Intervention effects of the Bloom Study are tested in a two-armed cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) including 11 municipalities in the intervention group and 11 municipalities in the control group.

The hypothesis is that the Bloom sleep intervention will 1) promote parents’ practices regarding managing child sleep, 2) promote parents’ self-efficacy, realistic expectations, knowledge, skills, beliefs about consequences, motivation and goals, and social influences regarding (managing) child sleep, 3) support the development of a normal circadian rhythm in children, and 4) promote age-related child sleep duration and quality.

The PhD-project has three research objectives:
• To conduct a process evaluation of the community health nurses’ implementation including acceptability, fidelity and adaptation of the Bloom sleep intervention during the first 6 months of implementation (article I).
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the Bloom sleep intervention on mothers’ and fathers’ self-efficacy, knowledge, realistic expectations, and parental practices regarding infant sleep at infant age of 6 months (article II).
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the Bloom sleep intervention on infant sleep duration and sleep quality at 6 and 12 months (article III).