Family Healthy Living Early Intervention Program

Family-based, Healthy Living Intervention for Children With Overweight and Obesity and Their Families

The Childhood Healthy Weights Early Intervention Program (EIP) is a family-based pilot program that will promote healthy lifestyle practices for families whose children are off the healthy weight trajectory (e.g., BMI ≥ 85th percentile for age and sex) that do not need the intensive services of medically supervised programs. It is a lifestyle behaviour approach for promoting healthy weights in children. The EIP program consists of 10 weekly intervention sessions (1.5 hours per session) followed by 4 maintenance sessions and is age specific (age 8-12). During the intervention, participants will also have access to digital educational content that is supplementary to what is provided during the individual sessions. The program will be integrated and aligned with existing BC-specific childhood healthy weights programs (e.g. the HealthLinkBC Eating and Activity Program for Kids). The EIP pilot will run from October-December 2018 with 8 child programs (age 8-12). Participants who do not qualify for this program (e.g., BMI ≤ 85th percentile for age and sex) will be offered a 10 week online program which is similar in educational content as the EIP program.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Child with BMI ≥ 85th percentile for age and sex
• Child is accompanied by a parent or legal guardian
• At least one member of the family have to be able to speak and read English
• Family agrees to attend group meetings over 10 weeks

Exclusion Criteria:

• Child unavailable to attend group weekly sessions
• Parent or guardian unavailable to attend group weekly sessions
• Participating child or parent, according to parent report, has medical condition contraindicating mild energy restriction or moderate physical activity, and medical clearance was not obtained