Three new apps provide evidence-based healthy hints for raising children ages 1 to 5. For example: “Don’t forget it’s time for your child’s 1-year checkup! The doctor will talk to you about how your child is growing and what to expect this year.”
The winners of the Apps4TotsHealth Challenge were announced on Monday in Washington at Health Datapalooza IV, an annual conference sponsored by the Health Data Consortium, a mix of government and private groups, which focuses on using publicly available data to improve health.
All three apps make use of a resource newly available to the public: the TXT4Tots message library developed with the American Academy of Pediatrics. The message library is a bank of tested tips on healthy eating and physical activity, downloadable as a spreadsheet — not an easy thing to integrate into daily life.
Enter the three winning apps, all free.
Dave Vockell
myfamily, by LyfeChannel, based in San Francisco. Available now on iPhone, and soon in Spanish and on Android.
This mobile app encourages parents to manage family health with customized recommendations based on each family member’s profile.
Last month, the app incorporated preventive care recommendations from the United States Preventive Services Task Force and others, and it now includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pediatric vaccine calendar and the TXT4Tots nutrition and physical activity messages. Users receive text messages as often as every day, in the form of a graphically engaging tip on parenting, nutrition or exercise, or a reminder about a doctor’s visit. Some messages include links to additional information, like healthfinder.gov content related to the well-child visits.
TotBytes, by Dan Lee, based in Chicago. Available now on iPhone, and later this year in Spanish and on Android.
Dan Lee
“It’s like GPS for parenting,” says Dan Lee, creator of TotBytes and founder of Breakpoint Health. The mobile app provides the TXT4Tots nutrition and physical activity content as well as the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations for nutrient intake.
TotBytes includes personalized tools and a community of parents to interact with around best recipes, shared challenges and Food and Drug Administration recalls. Users can select items from a pantry, generate age-appropriate meal plans and receive notices about when and what to feed their children, as well as warnings of what not to feed them.
With the personalized reporting tool, parents and caregivers can then record what children eat and evaluate how well they are balancing meal composition and providing nutrients on a given day or week.
As a “mobile dad” himself, Mr. Lee says not only that parents are “at their most cognitively challenged (tired, in a new situation)” during a child’s first few years, but that those years are a critical window for obesity prevention.
“This is really our effort to tackle the problem at the root cause,” Mr. Lee says.
Scott Lininger
Super Mommy’O, by Scott Lininger, based in Boulder, Colo. Available at supermommyo.com, only with Google Chrome.
If the name didn’t give it away, this is Super Mario for child rearing. The retro-looking game is currently a Web app only, as it evolved out of a side project the developer originally created for his young daughter. Now it is a fun way for parents to learn the TXT4Tots content.
“You play a mommy who has a 1-year-old kiddo, and you jump around, but instead of picking up coins, you pick up healthy foods and make healthy decisions for your kids,” Mr. Lininger says.
But, he warns, “You’ve got to dodge the doughnuts.” Doughnuts shot by robots, no less.