Family Nutrition and Physical Activity (FNPA) Screening Tool
The FNPA tool is a validated assessment tool for pediatric obesity prevention. It provides a feasible and effective way to initiate primary prevention of childhood obesity by promoting intervention on family behaviors and environments before unhealthy behaviors manifest in overweight and obesity. There are currently more than 50 papers that have reported using FNPA and the tool has been translated and validated into a number of other languages. The comparative effectiveness of enhancing well child visits with FNPA on obesity prevention is currently being evaluated in a randomized controlled trial led by Dr. Lisa Bailey-Davis within the Geisinger Health System. Dr. Karissa Peyer currently oversees the FNPA User Group (www.myfnpa.org) to provide a hub for others to connect and share work on the FNPA tool.
Our collective view is that clinical interest and engagement is the key to effective implementation so current efforts are focused on promoting integration within health-care systems. Implementing FNPA in clinical settings is a system-wide effort that requires the technological capacity (EPIC® and local IT), coordination by additional clinical and operational leaders, and engagement of clinicians positioned to that use the data in practice. We are in the process of developing an implementation guide, and will be working to provide webinars and templates for clinician training. Focus of our work is in pursuing multi-site trials to evaluate the implementation in multiple systems.
