JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Pediatric obesity continues to be a national health crisis. Parents play a critical role in obesity interventions. Digital health interventions, like personal activity trackers, can help better engage parents in pediatric obesity interventions and improve outcomes.

Objective:

1) Assess the feasibility and acceptability of implementing personal activity trackers as part of a comprehensive family-based lifestyle intervention for pediatric obesity (BodyWorks) in a federally qualified health center. 2) Evaluate the impact of personal activity trackers on parents on participant anthropometrics and the overall program. 3) Examine the associations between steps/day and usage (minutes) with body composition outcomes.

Methods:

158 families were randomized to control (BW) or intervention (BW+PAT). Mean levels of weight-by-height outcomes, including body mass index (BMI), BMI Z-scores, and BMI percent of the 95th percentile, were compared between the two groups.

Results:

There were no differences between study arms at baseline. After adjustment, there was a significant group difference in children’s BMI z-scores from baseline to post-intervention (p for interaction=0.01).

Conclusions:

Families in the intervention group that completed the program had slightly better weight loss outcomes compared to controls. Engaging parents through digital health interventions may be an effective way to enhance existing pediatric obesity intervention programs. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03215641; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03215641?term=fitbit%20study%20Espinoza&rank=1