Growing Resilience in Wind River Indian Reservation
Condition: Obesity; Overweight; Diabetes
MeSH terms: Overweight
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The Growing Resilience research leverages reservation-based assets of land, family, culture,
      and front-line tribal health organizations to develop and evaluate home food gardens as a
      family-based health promotion intervention to reduce disparities suffered by Native Americans
      in nearly every measure of health. Home gardening interventions show great promise for
      enabling families to improve their health, and this study aims to fulfill that promise with
      university and Wind River Indian Reservation partners. The investigators will develop an
      empowering, scalable, and sustainable family-based health promotion intervention with, by,
      and for Native American families and conduct the first RCT to assess the health impacts of
      home gardens.
    

Detailed description: 
      The intervention is comprised of designing and providing two years of support for home
      gardens. Families randomized to intervention will receive the following supports and
      services:

        1. Blue Mountain Associates will host a gardening workshop to include crop planning,
           receipt of customized guides to the crops the family selects (these are currently in
           development and will be ready by 2015), and hands-on basic skills training (mid-April).
           CHRs and interested local healthcare providers will also participate in workshops to
           help them prepare for supporting gardeners.

        2. BMA's garden manager and assistant(s) will visit each family to help the family install
           a garden and will provide the family with all needed supplies (late April to early May).
           Based on garden harvest measures collected in the Food Dignity project and the large
           gardens preferred by families in the pilot, the minimum garden size will be 80 sq. ft.
           with at least 30 sq. ft. devoted to crops other than corn and potatoes. The manager will
           design at least part of each garden in a way that allows the least physically able
           family members to participate in gardening.

        3. BMA will host a Facebook support and networking group for gardeners, with ARI, BMA, and
           UW gardening experts providing advice as needed.

        4. BMA's staff will visit each gardening family at least twice more during the growing
           season and will be available throughout the season for phone consultations and Facebook
           advice. For all years, the BMA garden manager will track actual intervention support
           provided to each family (e.g., timing and number of visits, training and supplies
           provided).

      The University of Wyoming research team will collect health measures before and at the end of
      each gardening season with gardening and control families for two years, after which the
      control families also receive the gardening intervention. The investigators anticipate
      enrolling about 100 families into the study with 400 (half adults, half children) people
      participating in the health measures.
    

Intervention name(s): Garden
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): Two years of financial and technical home gardening support for new gardeners
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: garden; Native American; BMI; Emotional health; Physical health