Improving Parent-Child Interactions to Enhance Child Health
Condition: Child Obesity
MeSH terms: Obesity; Pediatric Obesity
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Childhood obesity is a formidable public health issue in the United States,
      disproportionately affecting children from lower socioeconomic status households. Onset of
      obesity predicts cardiometabolic risks and other health problems in adolescence and into
      adulthood; thus, effective and early prevention is critical. Healthy parenting may play a
      pivotal role in preventing early childhood obesity. Warm, responsive, and consistent
      parenting is associated with the development of child self-regulation as well as healthy
      eating and physical activity practices, and thus may be protective against obesity risk.
      Targeting the parent-child relationship may be especially important when facilitating
      behavior change in parents who have ongoing stressors (e.g., low-income families). The
      proposed study aims to test an adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), an
      innovative parent management program that improves the parent-child relationship and enhances
      general parenting skills through the use of therapeutic in vivo coaching. Our adapted
      version, PCIT-Health, is a selective-prevention intervention that includes content specific
      to improving parent-child interactions and parenting in obesity-salient contexts, such as
      mealtime and child screen time. This project will elucidate novel approaches to, and novel
      targets of, early childhood obesity prevention and will provide data critical to test
      PCIT-Health in a large-scale randomized controlled trial. Parent-child dyads will be randomly
      assigned to PCIT-Health or a waitlist control in order to accomplish the following aims: AIM
      1: To assess the acceptability and feasibility of the PCIT-Health delivery and assessment
      methods in low-income parents of overweight young children ages 3 to 6 years. AIM 2: To test
      the preliminary efficacy and estimate the effect size of PCIT-Health on changes in child BMI
      z-score (primary outcome) from baseline to (1) intervention completion and (2) 6-month
      post-intervention. AIM 3: To explore the effect of PCIT-Health on the following secondary
      outcomes: (1) parent-child relationship quality, (2) parent behavior management skills, (3)
      child self-regulation, (4) child eating behaviors, (5) child physical activity, and (6) child
      screen media use.
    


Intervention name(s): PCIT-Health
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): PCIT-Health (also known as Parents Active in Their Children's Health; PATCH) is an adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. PCIT-Health targets (1) the parent-child relationship and (2) parenting efficacy both in general contexts (child play time and clean up time) and specifically in the context of obesity risk-related behaviors (child feeding, family mealtime, and child screen time).
Other intervention name(s): PATCH Program
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Intervention model description: Parent-child dyads will be randomly assigned to PCIT-Health or a waitlist control.
Masking: Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Prevention