Healthy Kids & Families: Overcoming Social, Environmental and Family Barriers to Childhood Obesity Prevention

The study will test the impact of a community health worker (CHW)-delivered intervention
aimed at helping families overcome barriers to childhood obesity prevention. Barriers include
social, environmental, and family issues.

This intervention will be compared to a control condition consisting of a community health
worker (CHW)-delivered intervention aimed at helping families improve positive parenting
skills.

The intervention uses multiple delivery modalities to maintain novelty and prevent
attrition/burden. These include home visits, telephone contacts, print (literacy sensitive
newsletters), social media (Facebook), and community events. Parents and children will
complete scheduled assessments at baseline, 6-, 12-, 18- and 24-month follow-up.

The Specific Aims are:

Aim 1: To determine the effectiveness of the intervention compared to the control condition
on child physical activity, healthy eating, BMI and utilization of built environment
resources.

Aim 2: To determine the effectiveness of the intervention compared to the control condition
on parent physical activity, healthy eating, BMI.

Aim 3: To examine the potential scalability of the intervention guided by the RE-AIM (Reach
Effectiveness Adoption Implementation Maintenance) model.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Eligible individuals for the research study are parents/guardians and their K-6th
grade children attending one of 9 schools in the greater Worcester area. Parents and
their children are recruited as parent-child dyads.

Exclusion Criteria:

- Has an inability or unwillingness to give informed consent or assent

- Is a prisoner

Exclusion (child only)

- The child has been told by a doctor that they cannot walk or eat fruits and
vegetables.