Enhanced Curriculum Intervention Did Not Result in Increased Postnatal Physical Activity in Rural, Southern,...

To test the impact of an enhanced home visiting curriculum on postnatal physical activity in rural, southern, primarily African American mothers.

Randomized controlled trial.

Three rural counties in Mississippi.

Between September 2013 and May 2016, 54 postpartum women randomized to standard home visiting curriculum (n = 30 control) or lifestyle enhanced home visiting curriculum (n = 24 experimental) were followed for 12 months.

The experimental arm of the intervention built upon the Parents as Teachers curriculum (control arm) by adding culturally tailored, maternal weight management and early childhood obesity prevention components.

Physical activity behavior and related psychosocial constructs including attitudes, expectations, self-efficacy, social support, and barriers.

Generalized linear mixed models were applied to test for treatment and time effects on physical activity and related psychosocial constructs.

Postnatal retention rates were 83% and 88% for control and experimental arms, respectively. Mean weekly minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were 28 and 50 minutes at postnatal months 1 and 12 in the control arm and 40 minutes for both time points in the experimental arm. Although a significant time effect was found, pairwise comparisons failed to reach statistical significance.

The enhanced treatment was not effective at increasing postnatal physical activity nor improving related psychosocial construct measures in this cohort of rural, southern women.