Family Inclusive Childhood Obesity Treatment designed for Low Income and Hispanic Families

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Project Summary: This proposal addresses a significant public health problem – childhood obesity and related health disparities faced by Hispanic children from low-income families – for which interventions are lacking. This Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) will test the effectiveness of a family-inclusive weight management program developed for low-income Hispanic populations. Interventions to prevent and treat childhood obesity have historically excluded Spanish speaking families. The intervention to be tested has been designed through in-depth collaborative research involving childhood-obesity clinician/researchers, safety-net clinics, community organizations, and the low-income and mostly Hispanic families they serve. The Healthy Living Program / La Vida Saludable (HeLP) has been designed to achieve reach, retention, and effectiveness for low-income and Hispanic families, including Spanish Speakers. HeLP incorporates the core components of evidence-based family-based-behavioral- therapy at a dose the US Preventive Services Task Force has recommended to be effective. The key novel design components of HeLP include: 1) Inclusion of the entire family. Previous interventions have focused on parent-child dyads. In HeLP, children with obesity and all siblings 2-16 years and adult caregivers receive targeted curricular components. Younger healthy weight siblings of children referred for obesity are targeted for obesity prevention, 2) Hands-on family training in meal-planning, shopping, and cooking is focused on reducing food insecurity while adapting traditional cuisine, 3) Delivery close to home through a partnership of primary care clinics and recreation centers, and 4) Delivery by trained, low-cost, culturally and linguistically concordant health educators. The goal of this research is to definitively assess using a randomized controlled design the effectiveness of the HeLP intervention for treatment and prevention of overweight and obesity vs a primary care counseling protocol active control condition—Recommended Treatment of Obesity in Primary Care (RTOP). The aims of this study are to: 1) compare the effectiveness of HeLP vs. RTOP at BMI reduction in three age groups of low- income Hispanic children with obesity: 2-6, 7-12, and 13-16 years (secondary measures include: cardiometabolic lab tests, fitness, quality of life, eating behaviors, and food security); 2) To compare the effectiveness of HeLP at obesity prevention by comparing the BMI trajectory of non-obese 2-11yr old children with BMI above median whose siblings are enrolled in HeLP vs. RTOP; 3) To study implementation of HeLP and RTOP within the RE-AIM framework, including: Reach, Adoption, Implementation (fidelity, replication costs, and cost per unit BMI change), and Maintenance. This proposal seeks to fill a major gap in understanding of how childhood obesity might be effectively treated in low-income and Hispanic families.