Home coaching changed babies' bottle habits. Cavities and weight? No clear change.

Randomised controlled trial (RCT). 350 mothers and babies. about 12 months per family (enrolled at child age ~6 months, final follow-up 12 months after baseline, at ~18 months of age); enrolment 2017-2020, data collection Dec 2017 - Dec 2021.

A trial. Chance decided who did what.

Who: 350 low-income South Asian immigrant mothers (born in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh; the abstract says Bangladeshi) and their ~6-month-old babies on Medicaid/CHIP, recruited in the Bronx, Queens and New Jersey via pediatric practices and the community group Sapna NYC; 176 coached, 174 leaflets; 44 lost to follow-up (87.42% retention)

• Yearly bottle drop-74%vs -42% leaflets
• Saw a dentist37%vs 4% leaflets
• Cavities or weightnoneno clear change

More to know, from our read of the paper:

• Behaviour outcomes (bottle/sippy cup use, diet, toothbrushing, dental visits) are SELF-REPORTED by mothers; say 'moms reported'
• Clinical outcomes showed no clear difference: visible caries 9.09% coached vs 3.13% leaflets (p = 0.27) and weight gain velocity (p = 0.60). Say 'no clear change', never 'coaching doesn't work for teeth'
• Authors say caries prevalence was 'extremely low', so the intra-oral camera may have missed cavities; COVID-19 moved data collection to phone from March 2020 and weights came partly from pediatric cards / mothers' reports; 18 months of age may be too short to see weight effects
• Intervention delivery was not blinded; the planned family-member visits (husbands, mothers-in-law) were dropped because relatives were hard to engage
• The '74% vs 42% yearly decline' comes from a Poisson mixed model rate ratio (0.36 vs 0.58 per year), adjusted for many baseline covariates; cross-sectional medians at 18 months (7 vs 14 per week) were not significantly different alone (p = 0.11). Use the paper's own '74% vs 42%' wording

A randomized trial followed 350 low-income South Asian immigrant mothers in the New York area and their 6-month-old babies for about a year. Half got six home visits and six calls from community health workers; half got leaflets. Mothers in the coached group reported bottle and sippy cup use falling 74% a year vs 42%, and 37% of coached babies saw a dentist vs 4%. But cavities and weight gain showed no clear difference; the authors point to a short follow-up and pandemic-era measuring problems.

We read the abstract and the full text of this paper and checked every number on this page against it (17 facts, checked on 2026-10-29). The study design is named above. Cohort and other observational studies are described as linked, not proven. Found an error? Email theis@onestudyaday.com.