Evaluation of the Food Follower app
To ensure we continue to provide an online app that is useful for parents to help introduce and continue to offer the common allergy causing foods to their baby, we are evaluating the Food Follower app through two phases of evaluation:
Phase 1 – Food Follower app data
Deidentified information collected through the Food Follower app will allow us to identify if the app is helping parents to introduce the common allergy causing foods and keep these foods in their child’s diet at least once a week. This information will help to assess uptake of the ASCIA guidelines for infant feeding for food allergy prevention.
All parents who create a food follower app account are eligible to participate in the study. Only deidentified data from parents who provide consent for this information to be used will be included in the evaluation.
When parents sign up for the Food Follower app, they are provided with information about this phase of the evaluation (a Participant Information Form) and given the option to provide consent for the information they save in the app to be used. Parents who do not provide consent can still register for and use the Food Follower app and the information they save in the app will not be used.
Phase 2 – Online surveys
To collect more detailed information about how parents are feeding the common allergy causing foods and some feedback about the Food Follower app, online surveys will be emailed to parents who register for the Food Follower app. The online surveys are optional and provided when their child is 6 months, 12 months, 2 years and 5 years of age. All information provided in these surveys will be deidentified, and participation in the surveys (or not) will not affect their ability to use the Food Follower app.
If parents choose to complete the survey, they are provided with the Participant Information Form and the option to provide consent and complete the survey.
Ethics approval
Approval to conduct both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of this research has been provided by the University of Western Australia, in accordance with its ethics review and approval procedures (Ethics approval: 2026/ET000461).
If you have any questions about this project, please feel free to contact Dr Sandra Vale at [email protected]. In addition, any person not satisfied with the response of researchers may raise ethics issues or concerns and may make any complaints about this research project by contacting the Human Ethics office at UWA on (08) 6488 3703 or by emailing [email protected].
All research participants are entitled to retain a copy of any Participant Information Form and/or Participant Consent Form relating to this research project.
