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PRISTA 2.0: Building Healthy Dietary Beginnings for All Families

PRISTA 2.0: An Intervention for Inclusive Dietary Support in Early Life for Families in the Netherlands

Research line: Tailored Lifestyle (Leefstijl op Maat): an integrated data-driven approach to lifestyle and living environment // Healthy Start
Funding Scheme: Health~Holland (Top Sector LSH) PPP Call 2025 – Tailored Lifestyle programme

Healthy eating during the first 1,000 days of life—from before pregnancy until a child’s second birthday—is essential for good health later in life. PRISTA 2.0 aims to help families in the Netherlands build healthy eating habits through practical, inclusive, and accessible support for parents and other caregivers and children, with special attention to families from diverse social and cultural backgrounds.

PRISTA 2.0 builds on earlier work with the PRISTA app, which provided personalised nutrition advice for pregnant and postpartum women. The new version broadens the focus to the whole household, including partners and children, and explores support beyond the app alone where needed to improve reach and inclusivity.

Objectives and Route to Impact

Objectives

  • Identify nutrition-related needs, preferences, and support wishes of perinatal households, across a variety of socio-economic positions (SEP) and cultural backgrounds.
  • Co-create an inclusive, household-oriented preventive intervention (PRISTA 2.0) that supports healthy dietary habits among parents and children during the first 1,000 days.
  • Explore feasible routes for implementation within existing care pathways, informed by healthcare and childcare stakeholders (e.g., opportunities in settings such as CenteringCare).

Route to impact

PRISTA 2.0 aims to strengthen early-life dietary support by combining parent and other caregivers and child nutrition in one empowering approach, while explicitly considering what is needed to make support inclusive and workable for families with different literacy levels, resources, and cultural contexts. The project also explores whether a combination of delivery modes (digital plus additional formats such as in-person training) is needed to ensure equitable access.

Methods and Deliverables

Methods (co-creation and needs assessment)

  • Interviews with caregivers: Semi-structured interviews with mothers, partners, and other caregivers to explore child nutrition support, partner involvement, and support preferences (with focus on including families with low SEP and diverse backgrounds).
  • Interviews with professionals: Semi-structured interviews with professionals involved in early-life care (including, for example, midwives, dieticians, childcare nurses, and CenteringCare staff) to identify current practices, opportunities, and barriers.
  • Surveys: Surveys among mothers and other caregivers and partners to link in-depth interview insights to broader patterns in needs and preferences (aiming for substantial participation from low SEP and/or culturally diverse groups).
  • Co-creation sessions: Sessions with caregivers (including a dedicated session with low SEP participants) and a session with professionals to translate insights into concrete intervention features and feasible integration routes.

Key deliverables

  • Qualitative study reports summarising caregivers’ perspectives and professional perspectives.
  • Survey report (caregivers’ perspectives and experiences).
  • Personas and user journey maps reflecting household behaviours and challenges (including socio-economic and cultural variety).
  • A design brief outlining intervention features informed by interviews, surveys, and co-creation.
  • A recommendations list focused on inclusivity (communication preferences, literacy needs, and support tools for low SEP households).
  • A first PRISTA 2.0 intervention protocol and app mock-up, plus an implementation potential report describing routes, opportunities, and barriers for embedding PRISTA 2.0 in care settings.

Contribution to Collaboration

PRISTA 2.0 is built as a public–private collaboration that combines academic expertise in nutrition and health with practice-based knowledge and access to families and communities. Partners jointly develop study protocols and translate findings into intervention features, with Balance Buddy supporting participant recruitment and ensuring the project stays connected to real-life family contexts, and Groente & Meer co-leading co-creation and practical translation.

Team

Contact

Janine Faessen, MSc

prista@wur.nl