Pregnancy and EARly Lifestyle Improvement Study

Summary

The investigators propose to conduct a randomized controlled trial in 200 overweight/obese pregnant women and their offspring. The prenatal intervention will emphasize improving diet and physical activity. The lifestyle intervention will be delivered within an empowerment theoretical framework through a combination of group sessions, individual counseling, and by monitoring compliance to diet and physical activity to further tailor the intervention. The post-partum intervention sessions will include mothers and their offspring and will focus on breastfeeding, improving physical activity and quality of the diet and feeding practices through the first post-partum year. As part of routine prenatal care, participants in both the control and intervention arms will be given health-related advice. Since the majority of participants are expected to be eligible for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, both groups will also receive assistance through WIC as per their routine policies. Our primary outcome is Gestational Weight Gain (GWG). The major secondary outcome of interest is infant BMI z-score at 12 months of age, and the investigators will also be evaluating several metabolic outcomes in mothers and infants.

Conditions

• Obesity
• Hyperglycemia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Lifestyle intervention group

The lifestyle intervention will be delivered within an empowerment framework which promotes behavioral changes by facilitating health self-efficacy, utilizing self-praise and using active coping skills to address and manage emotions. A nutrition component primarily focuses on total calories, for which energy requirements will be individually calculated for each pregnant women and on general diet quality with an emphasis on carbohydrate quality. It will also promote an overall healthy diet, emphasizing improvement of fat quality and reducing salt intake. A physical activity component focuses on promoting regular movement and minimizes the duration of bouts of sitting or lying during waking hours as well as non-exercise activity.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Puerto Rico

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Kaumudi J Joshipura, ScD MS · University of Puerto Rico Medical Science Campus

• Paul W Franks, PhD MPhil MS · Lund University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-01-31

Primary Completion

2015-11-30

Completion

2015-11-30

Countries

• Puerto Rico

Study Locations