Assessing parents’ awareness about children’s “first thousand days of life”: a descriptive and analytical study

BACKGROUND: Many adulthood illnesses are rooted in childhood, especially in the “first thousand days of life”. Despite parents’ role in children’s development, no study has examined parental awareness concerning this period. This study aimed to examine the awareness of parents concerning the “first thousand days of life” and the relationship between parents’ demographics and their awareness. METHODS: This study was conducted on 135 parents in Kerman, Iran, using a valid and reliable questionnaire developed by researchers based on the opinion of experts and relevant references. The relationship between participants’ demographics and their awareness was examined by multiple regression. The relationship between homogeneity of couples’ education degree and awareness was analyzed using ANOVA. Chi-square was used to examine the relationship between information sources and parents’ familiarity and to compare parents’ preferred sources. RESULTS: The average parental awareness was 41.96 ± 11.90. Eighty-three percent of the parents have not heard about the “first thousand days of life”. The source of information for 57% of the parents was friends and relatives (p < 0.0001). Overall, 87% of the parents desired to know about this period, and 47% liked using mobile applications for information (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Parents’ awareness about the “first thousand days of life” is lower than the average. Since the source of information concerning this period for most parents is friends and relatives and most parents are very interested in obtaining information, it is recommended that policy-makers use the capacity of other sources to increase parents’ awareness. Given the greater tendency of parents to obtain information through mobile applications, we suggest investing more in this source. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13690-021-00673-6.