Optimizing parental involvement in caring for preterm infants

Journal of Perinatology (2015) 35, 669670

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EDITORIAL

Optimizing parental involvement in caring for preterm infants

Journal of Perinatology (2015) 35, 669670; doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/jp.2015.60

Web End =10.1038/jp.2015.60

There is increased recognition that family-centered practices and parenting interventions are essential for promoting infant feeding, positioning, regulatory behaviors and social interactions after preterm birth. It is in this respect that the randomized clinical trial (RCT) by White-Trout et al.1 entitled Inuences of H-HOPE intervention for premature infants on growth, feeding progression, and length of stay during initial hospitalization offers important lessons in the current era of neonatal intensive care. H-HOPE is an acronym for hospital to home transition: optimizing premature infants environments. The H-HOPE program is built on a series of protocolized interventions by neonatal nurses, developmental psychologists and neonatologists in partnership with parents to address two major challenges in caring for preterm infants. The rst is teaching caregivers to understand and respond to infants cues that promote organized and coordinated suck, swallow and breathing during feeding.2 The second is to provide parents with management strategies for implementing developmentally informed practices during daily routines.3 The essential components of these multisensory interventions involve recognizing infant states and using touch, voice, positioning and social interactions before feedings. The key question is: Can these interventions promote parental involvement and concurrently improve infant growth, development and readiness for discharge? An additional question is: Can these skills be implemented by mothers who have often been difcult to engage because of family stressors of poverty, minority status, limited maternal education and neighborhood distress? It is to address these challenges that White-Traut et al. conducted a RCT comparing the H-HOPE intervention with a traditional parent-education program (PEP).

Who was studied? The cohort involved 182 infants born between 29- and 34-weeks gestation who were clinically stable and recruited from two central city neonatal intensive care nurseries.The mean infant gestation was 32.6 weeks...