INTRODUCTION
Despite widespread recognition among public health experts that childhood sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption should be reduced, doing so has proven to be a challenge. An agent-based model (ABM) of early childhood SSB consumption was applied to data from three high-quality, longitudinal cohort studies to gain insight into potentially effective intervention strategies across contexts.
METHODS
From 2021 through 2023, a single ABM design was applied to datasets derived from three separate cohorts of children followed from infancy through childhood, with very different populations and environments (participants recruited 1999-2002; 2003-2010; 2009-2014). After assessing its ability to reproduce observed consumption patterns across cohorts, it was used to simulate potential impacts of multiple intervention strategies across contexts.
RESULTS
Interventions reducing home availability of SSBs consistently had the largest potential effects. Impact differed between cohort settings: a complete decrease in availability resulted in an estimated 87% decrease in overall early childhood consumption for one of the cohorts, compared to 61% and 54% in the others. Reducing availability in center-based childcare resulted in substantially greater reduction in one cohort relative to the other two.
CONCLUSIONS
There is untapped potential for strategies targeting children's SSB consumption in the home, but in some instances other approaches might also yield meaningful effects. Tailoring approach to setting may be important, and ABMs can be informative for doing so. This ABM has broad generalizability and potential to serve as a tool for designing effective, context-specific strategies to reduce childhood SSB consumption.