The ECAIL trial was launched in 2017 to evaluate a multicomponent intervention for childhood obesity prevention targeted at socially disadvantaged and hard-to-reach families. The study rationale, as presented in the available PubMed record, situates the trial within efforts to reduce health inequalities by designing interventions tailored to families facing social disadvantage.
The source emphasizes the trial’s focus on real-world implementation challenges and the need to understand how external shocks—specifically the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis—influence the trial’s ability to reach and retain participants.
From the PubMed entry, the ECAIL trial is presented as a multicomponent program aimed at pregnant women and families at risk for childhood obesity. The population of interest is described broadly as socially disadvantaged families who are typically hard to reach with preventive interventions. The specific components of the intervention, randomization or allocation methods, evaluation metrics, sample size, and statistical analysis plans are not reported in the source content available.
Recruitment activities occurred at a maternity hospital in Lille, France, where healthcare providers screened pregnant women for eligibility. The record indicates the maternity setting as the operational point for initial contact with potential participants, reflecting an antenatal recruitment strategy to engage families prior to the postpartum period.
Details such as screening tools, inclusion and exclusion criteria, recruitment yield, consent processes, or demographic characteristics of those screened and enrolled are not included in the provided PubMed content.
The published article is framed as a mixed-methods implementation study focused on two primary implementation outcomes: reach (the degree to which the target population was contacted and enrolled) and engagement (participant involvement with intervention activities). The study explicitly examines these outcomes across two major contextual stressors: the global COVID-19 pandemic and a concurrent cost-of-living crisis.
This framing suggests the authors aimed to document how large-scale social and economic disruptions affect the feasibility and uptake of prevention programs among disadvantaged families. However, the specific qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups), quantitative measures of reach and engagement, timelines, and analytic approaches used to evaluate the influence of those contextual factors are not described in the available excerpt.
The PubMed entry provides full bibliographic metadata: the article is published in PLoS One (2026 Oct 8;21(10):e0350372), DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0350372, and PubMed ID 42848780. The author list includes Delphine Poquet and many coauthors with affiliations across Université Paris Cité, Université Lille, Inserm, CHU Lille, Sorbonne Université, and a nonprofit partner (Association Programme Malin). Multiple clinical and research units are represented, including centers for epidemiology, clinical investigation, pediatrics, and midwifery.
The record available for this task contains only truncated abstract material and bibliographic metadata. Critical trial details are missing from the provided source content. Specifically, the following were not reported in the supplied PubMed text and therefore cannot be summarized here:
Because these items are absent from the captured source, readers should consult the full article for complete methods, results, and authors’ interpretation.
Based on the framing in the PubMed record, the ECAIL trial addresses important implementation questions: how to design and deliver preventive interventions for families experiencing social disadvantage, and how external crises shape program reach and participant engagement. Studies of this type are valuable for informing adaptive recruitment strategies, health service partnerships (for example, antenatal or maternity services), and context-sensitive delivery models.
However, without access to the study’s reported data and detailed findings, explicit practice implications, effective strategies identified by the authors, or evidence-based recommendations cannot be extracted from the provided source.
The ECAIL trial represents a targeted effort to prevent childhood obesity among socially disadvantaged families using a multicomponent approach initiated at maternity care. The published mixed-methods implementation study aims to assess reach and engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis, acknowledging the impact of social context on implementation success. The PubMed record for the article supplies bibliographic and author information but the abstract text and outcome details were truncated in the provided source; therefore, key methodological and result-specific information are not reported here. To obtain the full methods, results, and authors’ conclusions, consultation of the complete PLoS One article (DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0350372) is required.