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Text Messaging Based Obesity Prevention Program for Parents of Pre-Adolescent African American Girls

Chishinga Callender1, Deborah Thompson2

  • 1USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates Street, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Chishinga.Callender@bcm.edu.

Children (Basel, Switzerland)
|December 7, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Parents of African American girls are interested in mobile health (mHealth) interventions for childhood obesity prevention. Text messaging programs can effectively deliver healthy eating and physical activity content to support an obesity-preventive home environment.

Area of Science:

  • Childhood obesity prevention
  • Public health interventions
  • Health disparities

Background:

  • African American girls face higher obesity risks compared to peers.
  • Parental influence on home environment is crucial for child obesity prevention.
  • Need for targeted obesity prevention programs for parents.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To gather formative research from parents of 8-10-year-old African American girls.
  • To understand perceptions and expectations for a text messaging-based obesity prevention program.
  • To inform the development of culturally relevant mHealth content.

Main Methods:

  • Surveys and interviews with 30 mothers of African American girls.
  • Development of text messages based on parent input.
  • Expert panel review of draft text messages.

Main Results:

  • Mothers owned cellphones and used texting/internet services.
  • 86.7% of mothers expressed interest in receiving text messages on healthy eating and physical activity.
  • 107 text messages promoting an obesity-preventive home environment were developed and positively received.

Conclusions:

  • Mobile health (mHealth) interventions are appealing to parents of African American girls.
  • Parents have accessible technology for supporting mHealth obesity prevention strategies.
  • This study supports the feasibility of text messaging for childhood obesity prevention in this demographic.

Keywords:
African Americandiethome environmentobesityparentsphysical activitypreventionself-determination theorytechnologytext messages

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