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Clinicians should integrate digital tools like personalized text messages and dashboards into pediatric care to reduce obesity, improve weight-for-length and BMI z-scores, and offer a favourable strategy for long-term weight management in children.
Conducted across a diverse group of children across the United States, a new study in JAMA Network revealed that adding a digital health intervention to traditional health behaviour counselling can considerably improve weight trajectories and reduce obesity risk.
A total of 900 children were considered, with families randomly assigned to either a clinic-only health behaviour counseling group or a clinic plus digital intervention group. Along with the standard clinic-based counseling, the digital group received personalized text messages and a web-based dashboard designed to support healthy behaviours.
At 24 months, children in the digital intervention group had a significantly lower weight-for-length trajectory compared to those receiving only clinic-based counseling as per the CDC and Prevention criteria body mass index 85th percentile or more. The intervention also led to a decrease in both weight-for-length z-scores and body mass index (BMI) z-scores. Notably, the rate of obesity was 7.4% in the digital group, compared to 12.7% in the clinic-only group, indicating the intervention's possibility of preventing obesity.
This digital approach proved effective across various racial and ethnic groups, including those at higher risk for obesity, suggesting that such interventions can be a key tool in combating the growing childhood obesity epidemic.
JAMA Network
A Digital Health Behavior Intervention to Prevent Childhood Obesity The Greenlight Plus Randomized Clinical Trial
William J. Heerman et al.
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