• Matt Kasman, Ross A Hammond, Lydia Reader, Rob Purcell, Sally Guyer, Jody M Ganiban, Diane C Mitchell, Dana M Dabelea, Anna Bellatorre, Traci A Bekelman, Catherine C Cohen, Wei Perng, Anna H Grummon, Allison J Wu, Emily Oken, and Ken Kleinman.
• Center on Social Dynamics and Policy, Brookings Institution, Washington, District of Columbia. Electronic address: mkasman@brookings.edu.
• Am J Prev Med. 2023 Dec 1; 65 (6): 100310141003-1014.

IntroductionDespite widespread recognition among public health experts that childhood sugar-sweetened beverage consumption should be reduced, doing so has proven to be a challenge. An agent-based model of early childhood sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was applied to data from three high-quality, longitudinal cohort studies to gain insight into potentially effective intervention strategies across contexts.MethodsFrom 2021 to 2023, a single agent-based model design was applied to data sets derived from three separate cohorts of children followed from infancy to childhood, with very different populations and environments (participants recruited in 1999-2002; 2003-2010; and 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.ResultsInterventions reducing home availability of sugar-sweetened beverages 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 with 61% and 54% in the others. Reducing availability in center-based child care resulted in substantially greater reduction in one cohort relative to the other two.ConclusionsThere is untapped potential for strategies targeting children's sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in the home, but in some instances, other approaches might also yield meaningful effects. Tailoring approach to setting may be important, and agent-based models can be informative for doing so. This agent-based model has broad generalizability and potential to serve as a tool for designing effective, context-specific strategies to reduce childhood sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.Copyright © 2023 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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