JAMA

ObesityWeek 2024: Digital health tools show promise in reducing childhood obesity

November 5, 2024

Infants whose families received both text message-based and clinic-based health behavior counseling had healthier weight trajectories compared with those who only received clinic-based counseling. These findings were shared at the ObesityWeek annual meeting.

This individually randomized, parallel-group trial (Greenlight Plus) was conducted at 6 U.S. medical centers and enrolled infants shortly after birth to compare the effectiveness of adding a digital childhood obesity prevention intervention to health behavior counseling delivered by pediatric primary care clinicians. In the clinic-based health behavior counseling (clinic-only) group, pediatric clinicians used health literacy–informed booklets at well-child visits to promote healthy behaviors (n = 451). In the clinic + digital intervention group, families also received health literacy–informed, individually tailored, responsive text messages to support health behavior goals and a web-based dashboard (n = 449).

Key findings: Toddlers in the combined intervention group had a lower mean weight-for-length trajectory, with an estimated reduction of 0.33 kg/m at 24 months. There was also an adjusted mean difference of −0.19 for weight-for-length z score and -0.19 for BMI z score. At 24 months, 23.2% of children in the intervention group were overweight or obese, compared with 24.5% in the control group. At that age, 7.4% of the intervention group compared with 12.7% of the clinic-only group had obesity.

Source:

Heerman WJ; Greenlight Investigators; et al. (2024, November 3). JAMA. A Digital Health Behavior Intervention to Prevent Childhood Obesity: The Greenlight Plus Randomized Clinical Trial. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39489149/