Quincy Family, Youth & Technology For Lifestyle Change (FYT-4-LIFE) Study

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Pediatric Obesity

In brief

To date, approaches that show the most promise for preventing and/or reversing the course of childhood obesity involve the delivery of intensive lifestyle interventions within a family-based context, emphasizing the necessity of parental involvement and making changes in family routines and the home environment. Considering that the current demand for pediatric weight management programs far exceed availability, as well as the high attrition rates observed in such programs, there is a great need for more accessible and efficient means of delivering these interventions to reduce the burden of childhood obesity. The goal of this study is to understand whether text messaging and social media platforms can be leveraged to address the important issue of childhood obesity by engaging parent/guardians in one of these strategies, and whether these strategies produce similar outcomes. No existing study has compared these strategies head-to-head, and the investigators believe that this project will be instrumental in understanding the determinants of success in these strategies and allow us to collect sufficient intelligence to be able to deploy these meaningfully to patients as part of usual care.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT02324361

Run by

Massachusetts General Hospital

People needed

48

Starts

2014-07-01

Expected to finish

2015-02-01

Last updated by the study team

2020-10-22

Who can join

Age: 3 and older, up to 7. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Index child's BMI ≥90th percentile
• Index child age between 3 and 7 years of age at time of enrollment in study
• The child is under the care of a primary care provider at the Quincy Pediatric Associates practice
• The family is not planning to move from the Greater Boston area during the study period
• The participating parent/guardian:
• Is 18 years or older
• Is the primary caregiver for the child
• Has regular access to the Internet
• Has regular access to a personal computer with USB connection OR a smartphone with a mobile operating system that is compatible with the physical activity tracker
• Owns a Facebook account AND a cellphone with text messaging capability and if choosing the text-messaging intervention, is willing to receive a maximum of 62 text messages/month for 3 months on their personal cellphone
• Is fluent in English (spoken and written)

You may not qualify if…

• Children who are diagnosed with underlying medical or pharmacologic factors that may contribute to obesity and/or affect participation in physical activity
• Significant medical or psychiatric co-morbidities in the participating parent/guardian
• Visual, hearing, or cognitive impairments in the participating parent/guardian
• Index child or parent/guardian currently enrolled in another weight control program
• Children who have a sibling already enrolled in the study

Where it is running

• Quincy Pediatric Associates — Quincy, Massachusetts, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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