Family Program for Weight Gain Prevention

The long-term goal of this project is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate to Extension Service families across the state of Colorado, an engaging, interactive, and evidence-based Family Program in order to prevent weight gain in adults and excess weight gain in children. Excess weight gain in children is defined as an increase in body weight beyond the increase in weight associated with normal growth and development. The program will focus on small, easily adopted, sustainable, lifestyle changes.

Project Objectives include:

1. Enhancing a Family Program by including food and physical activity environmental assessments, an online social network, and a pre-programmed health-based text messaging system, and by gaining feedback from extension families through a series of 6 focus groups. 2. Conducting a randomized trial to evaluate the impact of the enhanced Family Program on the prevention of weight gain in families with overweight children. The investigators hypothesize that excess weight gain will be prevented in subjects in the intervention group, while those in the control group will gain excess weight. 3. Disseminating the Family Program through USDA Cooperative Extension Services in Colorado and evaluate the usefulness/effectiveness of the program for USDA Extension agents and participating families. The investigators will conduct 4 additional focus groups at the end of this objective to gain feedback on its usefulness in a "real-life" setting. This objective is different from objective 2 in that the investigators are evaluating the program in a real-life setting, using qualitative and self-reported data, rather than conducting a clinical trial.

By conducting focus groups with Extension families during both objectives #1 and 3, the Family Program will help to improve knowledge regarding behavioral and environmental factors influencing obesity. After enhancing the Family Program (Objective #1), the investigators will test its effectiveness in a randomized study of 200 families (Objective #2). Finally, after having developed and tested this effective intervention strategy, the investigators will disseminate it through Extension Agents throughout the state to evaluate its usefulness in a "real-life" setting (Objective #3).