Primary Care, Communication, and Improving Children's Health

Summary

The purpose of this study is to determine communication content and strategies in primary care that predict improvement in weight status among overweight school-age children.

Conditions

• Childhood Obesity
• Overweight
• Communication
• Weight Loss

Interventions

OTHER

Communication regarding overweight status

Pediatrician-patient/parent communication regarding child's high weight status

OTHER

Risk-factor assessment and counseling

Counseling regarding cardiovascular risk factor assessments/results.

OTHER

Lifestyle behavior assessment and counseling

Counseling regarding diet and lifestyle changes to improve weight status.

OTHER

Interval follow-up to readdress weight

Interval follow-up to readdress weight, prior to the next well-child visit one year later. Follow-up could include ongoing care through nutrition and/or an intensive weight-management program.

OTHER

Patient-centered communication

Patient-centered communication will be scored as the ratio of patient to doctor-centered communication regarding weight topics. Means will be calculated for total and weight-communication-specific pediatrician, child, and parent-talk time, and patient, doctor, and the ratio of patient/doctor-centered communication scores. For the primary hypothesis, biomedical information-giving (for example, risk-factor communication) will be treated as patient-centered because the principal investigator's focus groups suggest that parents want this information, and prior research suggests that including biomedical-information giving improves the correlation of Roter's patient-centeredness measure with patient health status and satisfaction scores.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Christy B Turer, MD, MHS · University of Texas Southwestern and Children's Medical Center Dallas

Eligibility

Min Age

6 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-10-14

Primary Completion

2016-08-05

Completion

2017-08-10

Countries

• United States

Study Locations