Developing family – based mobile application for early prevention of childhood obesity and to enhance parents’ participation in improving child health, using wearable as a tool to measure physical activity

Abstract

[eng] Childhood obesity continues to be an important public health issue; it is not only a disease, but also may lead to social disabilities and diseases in adulthood in the long term. Development of maturity onset diabetes in young people is the most common consequence of childhood obesity. The use of mobile technologies and wearable devices for improving health care processes and outcomes (mHealth) is promising for health promotion. This protocol will describe the development and evaluative process of family – based mobile application for early prevention of childhood obesity and to enhance parents’ participation in improving child health, using wearable as a tool to measure physical activity. Methodology will describe development process, which will be followed by four main stages such as: 1) Collecting requirements from pediatricians, primary care professionals on nutrition education practice, guidelines and on the typical profiles of parents or families that could get most benefits from the intervention; 2) Prototyping the app features based on the collected requirements from pediatricians, primary care professionals on nutrition education practice and on The MAPS Toolkit; 3) Revising the prototyped features with pediatricians and nutritionists with respect to content and behavioral change strategies; 4) Deploying the intervention in evaluation study with target group. During the fourth stage a randomized clinical trial will be conducted to evaluate effectiveness and efficacy of the mobile application. 10 target child/parents pairs will be randomly selected and assigned to either an intervention or a control group. During 6 – month intervention period children in both groups will wear wearable device wGT3X-BT ActiGraph accelerometer, however control group will receive traditional supervised exercise (SE), and intervention group will receive daily activities suggested by mobile application.