Evaluation of an office- and hospital-based intervention to increase the use of cloth diapers.

To evaluate an office-based educational intervention to promote the use of cloth diapers, we randomly assigned parents of 193 infants either to the intervention group or to a control group. The intervention consisted of physician advice and written material on cloth and disposable diapers at the 2-week office visit. Midway through the study, one of the birth hospitals switched to the exclusive use of cloth diapers. The results indicate that the diapering decisions of parents can be influenced by practices in hospitals and by office-based physician and nurse counseling.