Improving Childhood Obesity-Related Behavior Change Through Better Risk Communication

Obesity, Childhood Clinical Trial

Official title:

Improving Childhood Obesity-Related Behavior Change Through Better Risk Communication

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Not yet recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03074929
• Other study ID #: 15895
• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• First received: March 1, 2017
• Last updated: March 3, 2017
• Start date: November 1, 2017
• Est. completion date: September 1, 2020

Study information

• Verified date: March 2017
• Source: Seattle Children's Hospital
• Contact: Davene R Wright, PhD
• Phone: 206-884-8241
• Email: davene.wright[@]seattlechildrens.org
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

One-third of American children are overweight or obese, leading to an increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), early mortality, and other risks throughout their lifespan relative to normal weight children. In our pilot work, we found that 67-83% of parents underestimate a child's long-term risk of developing cardiovascular disease in adulthood and that parents thought their own child's risks were 13-15% lower than those of a typical child in their community, even controlling for family health and demographic characteristics. Parents were 40 times less likely to predict that their child, rather than a typical child in their community, would be overweight or obese in adulthood. These findings suggest that parents suffer from optimism bias, the tendency to overestimate one's chances of experiencing unlikely positive events. Belief that a child is at increased risk for adverse health outcomes in adulthood could be an important motivator for a family to initiate behavior changes and vice versa.

The overall goal of this research is to develop provider-based risk communication approaches to motivate parents of obese children to engage in behavior change to protect their children from CVD and other obesity-related co-morbidities later in life. Specifically, the investigators will:

1. Develop risk communication methods that providers can use to better convey accurate information about a child's health behaviors, obesity status, and future health risks to parents.

2. Using an online experiment, we will evaluate the impact of new risk communication methods on parental engagement in behavior change.

3. Pilot test the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of new risk communication approaches in pediatric primary care clinics.

This work will give pediatricians novel tools to effectively discuss the long-term consequences of childhood obesity with parents. The findings from this work will inform an interventional trial that will assess the impact of improved risk communication techniques on child behavior change and health outcomes.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Enrollment: 50
• Est. completion date: September 1, 2020
• Est. primary completion date: September 1, 2020
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 99 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• must be a parent of a 5-12 year old child

• child must be a patient at University of Washington Medical Center

• child must have BMI at or above 95th percentile for age and sex

• parent must have home or mobile internet access

Exclusion Criteria:

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Obesity
• Obesity, Childhood
• Pediatric Obesity

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Novel risk communication
The investigators will develop novel risk communication messages to communicate the risks of childhood obesity to parents of children with obesity. The investigators will consider several novel approaches around message content and framing, but primarily, we propose using microsimulation models to forecast a child's long-term health risks, based on his age, race, gender, BMI, and family history of CVD.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Seattle Children's Hospital

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Frequency of logging meals in food diary	Frequency of diet monitoring	7 days
Primary	Quality of food diary	Quality of diet monitoring (i.e. recording 5 or more different foods per day)	7 days
Secondary	Weight class perception (questionnaire)	Does parent perceive child to be Underweight/About the right weight/Overweight/Obese	7 days
Secondary	Anxiety (Perceived Stress Scale)	Perceived Stress Scale	7 days
Secondary	Concern about child health (CAHPS)	In the last 6 months, did you have any questions or concerns about your child's health or health care?	7 days