Grey, EB;
Atkinson, L;
Chater, A;
Gahagan, A;
Tran, A;
Gillison, FB;
(2022)
A systematic review of the evidence on the effect of parental communication about health and health behaviours on children's health and wellbeing.
Preventive Medicine
, 159
, Article 107043. 10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107043.
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Abstract
Parents report feeling unsure how best to talk with their children about sensitive health topics and may avoid such conversations; yet if children have questions or concerns about their health, talking to a parent could enhance their health and wellbeing. We investigated the effects of parental communications about health and health behaviours on children's health and wellbeing, and explored what strategies can encourage parents to communicate about health. We conducted a systematic review and narrative synthesis of research published between January 2008 and April 2020 from five databases. Of 14,007 articles identified, 16 met inclusion criteria focusing on five topics: diet and weight (n = 5), body image (n = 2), sexual health (n = 7), physical activity (n = 1) and bullying (n = 1). Positive child outcomes were associated with positive general parent-child communication characterised by warmth, openness and allowing children choice. Conversely, hostility, negative and inconsistent messaging were associated with poorer outcomes. Interventions to increase parent-child communication could be classified as providing single directive messages, media campaigns or intensive support. Single messages increased communication frequency; media campaigns and intensive interventions showed mixed outcomes. No differences in outcomes were found according to child's gender or socio-economic status. Generally, parents were less confident in initiating, rather than continuing, conversations and were more likely to initiate conversations when they felt they had good topic knowledge. While the relatively small, diverse sample limits the strength of these findings, this review provides provisional support for approaches to promote positive parent-child communication about health that are associated with better child health and wellbeing.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A systematic review of the evidence on the effect of parental communication about health and health behaviours on children's health and wellbeing |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107043 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107043 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
| Keywords: | Parent-child communication, Health communication, Parenting, Child wellbeing, Health behaviours |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10152817 |
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