Healthy Mothers Healthy Families Workshop Intervention: A Preliminary Investigation of Healthy Lifestyle Changes for Mothers of a Child with a Disability

Substantial evidence identifies mothers of children with a disability as having a higher risk for compromised health outcomes and lifestyle restrictions secondary to caring responsibilities. Healthy Mothers Healthy Families (HMHF) is an evidence informed health and empowerment group-based workshop program. Methods: HMHF features health education and lifestyle redesign content. Mixed methods evaluated the program. This paper presents a pretest-postest time series design to evaluate outcomes over 8 months. Results: Mothers reported significant change across 4 time points including participation in healthy activity (p=0.017), depression, anxiety, stress symptoms (p=0.017, 0.016, 0.037 respectively) and empowerment (p=0.009). Conclusion: Coupled with qualitative findings, these results suggest that HMHF is effective at improving health and wellbeing outcomes for mothers of children with a disability.