Development of the Sleep Health in Preschoolers (SHIP) Intervention: Integrating a Theoretical Framework for a Family-Centered Intervention to Promote Healthy Sleep

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and design of a theoretically derived, family centered, and home-delivered health behavior change intervention to address behavioral sleep problems in young children, including modifications responsive to pilot study experiences. Sleep Health in Preschoolers (SHIP) is an intervention grounded in Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory and Bronfenbrenner's Socioecological framework that integrates an individualized, stepwise approach to include self-management skills and the inherent and dynamic interactions between individual child, parent, and family level factors and diverse socioecologic factors. SHIP is a personalized, tailored intervention that partners with parents to provide knowledge, motivation, and skills for setting and achieving goals, adapting to setbacks, and problemsolving in an iterative fashion to improve their child's sleep.