Growing Right Onto Wellness (GROW): Changing Early Childhood Body Mass Index (BMI) Trajectories

Increases in sedentary lifestyle and high calorie food consumption, among other factors, have contributed to epidemic levels of childhood obesity in the US. Children who are overweight during the preschool period are more likely to become overweight adolescents and obese adults. Food preferences and activity habits set in early childhood can profoundly influence lifelong trajectories for Body Mass Index (BMI) and health. Specifically, rapid BMI gain in early childhood has been established to affect adulthood mortality and morbidity. Unfortunately, the longer such unhealthy patterns are in place, the more difficult it can be to reverse them. Therefore, healthy lifestyle interventions targeted at children as early as preschool have enormous potential to affect lifelong health. Furthermore, nutrition and activity patterns are determined not only at the child level, but within the family and the community.

This study will assess the impact of a family-based and community centered multilevel behavioral intervention addressing nutrition and physical activity with high risk parent-preschool children dyads to promote pediatric obesity prevention. The 7 year study will follow 600 parent preschool child dyads, half of whom will be randomized into the intervention condition which will utilize a health literate approach, build new social networks, utilize behavior modification tools including goal setting, self monitoring, and problem solving, and create behavior-environmental synergy with cues to action for use of the built environment for healthy behaviors. Both the intervention and control group (separately) will receive the control condition in which parent-child dyads will receive a literacy promotion/school success curriculum.

The primary outcome of interest will be early childhood BMI trajectories measured at multiple time points over the three year RCT. Additional measures collected throughout the study from children and parents will include: tricep skin fold, waist circumference, actigraphy, 3-day diet recalls, questionnaires, social network data, and saliva to assess a genetics/epigenetics associated with obesity. Consistent with a multilevel systems approach, the investigators will develop and assess built environment changes related to obesity prevention. Moreover, working with the study's community partners, the investigators will evaluate how this approach affects local policy.