Peer Counseling in Family-Based Pediatric Overweight Treatment

A new model of delivering family-based pediatric overweight treatment that decreases costs but sustains short- and long-term efficacy is needed. One possible opportunity for this is a peer intervention model in which families receiving professionally-led intervention then subsequently providing intervention to other families. In addition, peer interventionists' continued engagement in the behavior change process through providing intervention to others could improve their own long-term efficacy. The project begins with the standard approach of having professional interventionists provide family-based behavioral pediatric overweight treatment to overweight children and their parent (1st generation families; n=30). Subsequently, half of 1st generation families will be randomly assigned to serve as peer interventionists to other overweight parents and children (2nd generation families; n=30). The remaining 1st generation families will neither receive nor provide any additional treatment. This project aims to develop the peer intervention training and delivery and then to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the peer intervention. This project also aims to derive an estimate of the efficacy of peer intervention (receiving and providing) both at the end of receiving treatment and 6 months later, as well as the impact of providing intervention on peer interventionists' weight outcomes.