The Added Value of Telephone Follow Up and Home Visits in Helping Children to Grow Up Healthy
Condition: Obesity
MeSH terms: Obesity
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Leading medical organizations have called on primary care pediatricians to take a central
      role in the prevention of childhood obesity. Weight counseling typically has not been
      incorporated into routine pediatric practice due to time and training constraints. Brief
      interventions with simple behavior change messages are needed to reach high-risk children,
      particularly Latino and Black children who are disproportionately affected by obesity and
      related comorbidities. Steps to Growing Up Healthy (Added Value) is a randomized controlled
      trial testing the efficacy of brief motivational counseling (BMC) delivered by primary care
      clinicians and the added value of supplementing BMC with monthly contact by community health
      workers (CHW) in the prevention/reversal of obesity in Latino and Black children ages 2-4
      years old. Mother-child dyads (targeted n=150) are recruited for this 12-month randomized
      trial at an inner-city pediatric primary care clinic and randomized to: 1) BMC delivered by
      clinicians and nurses at well, sick, and WIC visits with the goal of reducing obesogenic
      behaviors (BMC); 2) BMC plus monthly phone calls by a CHW (BMC+Phone); or 3) BMC plus monthly
      home visits by a CHW (BMC+Home). During BMC, the medical team facilitates the selection of a
      specific goal (i.e., reduce sugar sweetened beverage consumption) that is meaningful to the
      mother and teaches the mother simple behavioral strategies. Monthly contacts with CHWs are
      designed to identify and overcome barriers to goal progress. Dyads are assessed at baseline
      and 12 months and the primary outcome is change in the child's BMI percentile. We hypothesize
      that BMC+Phone and BMC+Home will produce greater reductions in BMI percentiles than BMC alone
      and that BMC+Home will produce greater reductions in BMI percentiles than BMC+Phone.
    


Intervention name(s): Brief Motivational Counseling (BMC); Brief Motivational Counseling Plus Phone Calls (BMC + Phone); Brief Motivational Counseling Plus Home Visits (BMC + Home)
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): 3-5 minute BMC delivered by clinicians and nurses at well, sick, and WIC visits with the goal of reducing obesogenic behaviors. During BMC, the medical team facilitates the selection of a specific goal (i.e., reduce sugar sweetened beverage consumption) that is meaningful to the mother and teaches the mother simple behavioral strategies.; BMC as described above that is supplemented by monthly telephone contacts with community health workers designed to identify and overcome barriers to goal progress.; BMC as described above that is supplemented by monthly home visits with community health workers designed to identify and overcome barriers to goal progress.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Obesity prevention; Weight management; Motivational Interviewing