A study co-led by a Johns Hopkins Children's Center clinician-researcher shows that adding text messaging and other electronic feedback to traditional in-clinic health counseling for parents about feeding habits, playtime and exercise prevents very young children from developing obesity and potentially lifelong obesity-related problems.
Findings from the study , which was co-led by Eliana Perrin, M.D., M.P.H., Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Primary Care at the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health, will be published in JAMA and presented at the Obesity Society's "Obesity Week " in San Antonio, both on Nov. 3. The work stems from decades of research showing that having obesity in early childhood significantly increases the risk of lifetime obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other serious diseases, particularly in low-income and minority populations.
About 1 in 5 school-aged children were affected by obesity in 2017–18, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — rates that have only increased during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to reduce the rate have relied heavily on in-person interventions by pediatric providers, with limited success.
In an earlier study , also co-led by Perrin, investigators demonstrated that a "health literacy-informed" primary care-based intervention called the Greenlight Program , which Perrin and colleagues at other medical centers developed for parents, improved healthy growth in newborns until 18 months of age, but found that improvements were not sustained at age 2 years.
In an effort to extend the improvements through 2 years of age, when pediatrics office visits become less frequent, the new study focused on using digital technology to reinforce elements of the Greenlight Program, which previously only consisted of written materials and health counseling during primary care visits.
