Grant: Team Grant: Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) - Canada

The "Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)" hypothesis suggests that a healthy growth and development in pregnancy and early childhood is critical for optimal health and lifetime wellbeing. Yet, Canada's children are falling behind. Nearly 1 in 3 Canadian children are overweight or obese, 1 in 4 is not developmentally ready for school, and 1 in 5 has a mental health problem. Early interventions can improve child health and development. Our study will evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention on child obesity and broader indicators of child development. Our trial, TROPHIC (TRajectories Of healthy life using Public Health and primary care Interventions in Canada), will take a 'cumulative-impact' approach, designed to improve health behaviours and reduce modifiable risk factors across the entire early child developmental period. TROPHIC will randomise pregnancy-planning women to evaluate a 4-phase intervention, from preconceptually all the way through early childhood. Its innovative design will enable the collection of family-level data, by including fathers/partners preconceptionally, and following more than one child within the family. TROPHIC comprises of a pan-Canadian team of 48 established investigators, from 21 institutions, across 6 provinces with proven expertise to successfully undertake this Healthy Life Trajectories initiative (HeLTI) project. The proposed project is aligned with the international HeLTI studies. TROPHIC capitalizes on efficient study recruitment and data collection methods, using existing research initiatives, such as TARGet Kids! The planned linkage of TROPHIC data to provincial administrative health datasets will enable longitudinal follow-up of children past age 5 years. We will leverage existing structures in public health and primary care to recruit participants, and then deliver interventions, if proven effective, to enable scalability at provincial and national levels.