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Authors: Kath Wilkinson (University of Exeter), Georgina Marks (Action for Children), Iain Lang (University of Exeter), Jenny Lloyd (University of Exeter), Vashti Berry (University of Exeter)
Background: Early childhood experiences are of critical importance to children’s cognitive, social and emotional development and depend heavily upon a sensitive and responsive relationship with their caregiver. Community champions have been employed across various settings to disseminate evidence-based public health information. The Building Babies Brains programme trains champions to equip parents with child development knowledge and parental engagement strategies.
We investigated how the champion-parent relationship and champion personal characteristics affect effective information dissemination in this context.
Methods: We administered an online survey (n=53) and interviews (n=14) with community champions (including peers and professionals) from target disadvantaged communities in the Southwest of England, achieving representation from across all 16 training cohorts. We conducted a realist-informed reflexive thematic analysis to generate themes in the data and highlight the contexts, mechanisms, and outcome patterns identified.
Results: We observed 15 Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations across five themes: information sharing opportunities, information relevance, the nature of the champion-parent relationship, interaction expectations, and champion confidence. Our programme theory for how the community champion approach works identified that peer champions focused more on building rapport, modelling behaviours, and being a trusted community resource than direct information transfer. Professional champions showed greater expertise and confidence in discussing parenting practices directly. For both groups, traits such as friendliness and the ability to establish a trusting relationship enhanced effectiveness.
Discussion: This research identifies the impacts of champion role, characteristics, and the champion-parent relationship on the effectiveness of knowledge mobilisation in this context, with implications for the training and recruitment of champions. Those using a champion model in comparable settings should ensure champions have the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence to engage parents and share information effectively.
| Conflict of interest | None |
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