Healthy Connections with Kids
Obesity and poor lifestyle choices continue to plague our youth. As parents and physicians, we are constantly searching for ways to connect to the kids and get them to respond.
A recent article in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior looked at using mobile phone short message services to help children monitor health-related behaviors.
The initial study results do show some promise in connecting with the kids.
Jennifer R. Shapiro, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues conducted a study of 58 children aged 5 to 13 years, as well as their parents. The participants were given three group education sessions about increasing physical activity, reducing screen time and cutting down on consumption of sugary drinks, and 18 children were then assigned to monitor their target behaviors via text messages, 18 via a personal diary and 22 did not monitor their behavior.
The intervention continued for eight weeks, by which time 13 of the short messaging, seven of the personal diary and 11 of the control group subjects completed the study, giving attrition rates of 28 percent, 61 percent and 50 percent, respectively. You can see the highest dropout rate occurred in those who had to keep a personal diary probably related to the archaic pen and paper that kids seem to abhor.
These results suggest that one potentially effective way of increasing self-monitoring adherence in children is to use novel devices such as cell phones and text messaging.
There is probably an entrepreneur that could develop a software program or other service that parents could sign up for which would facilitate healthier behaviors and lifestyles. The data collection could be used for other research opportunities.
Anyone interested?
A recent article in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior looked at using mobile phone short message services to help children monitor health-related behaviors.
The initial study results do show some promise in connecting with the kids.
Jennifer R. Shapiro, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues conducted a study of 58 children aged 5 to 13 years, as well as their parents. The participants were given three group education sessions about increasing physical activity, reducing screen time and cutting down on consumption of sugary drinks, and 18 children were then assigned to monitor their target behaviors via text messages, 18 via a personal diary and 22 did not monitor their behavior.
The intervention continued for eight weeks, by which time 13 of the short messaging, seven of the personal diary and 11 of the control group subjects completed the study, giving attrition rates of 28 percent, 61 percent and 50 percent, respectively. You can see the highest dropout rate occurred in those who had to keep a personal diary probably related to the archaic pen and paper that kids seem to abhor.
These results suggest that one potentially effective way of increasing self-monitoring adherence in children is to use novel devices such as cell phones and text messaging.
There is probably an entrepreneur that could develop a software program or other service that parents could sign up for which would facilitate healthier behaviors and lifestyles. The data collection could be used for other research opportunities.
Anyone interested?
Labels: cell phones, health, lifestyles
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