Kids Obesity Prevention Program - Study (KOP)

Summary

Obesity and its associated comorbidities are becoming a key and rapidly growing public health problem. The cause of obesity is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure in favor of the former. Childhood and adolescence are seen as critical time for its development. It is therefore crucial to provide both prevention and treatment actions already during childhood. The prevention and treatment weight-management programs in children focus on improving diet, eating behaviours, psychosocial aspects and increasing physical activity. One important basic requirement for any weight-management program is, that both children and their families are motivated and ready for change. Video games, including exergames, serious games or combined approaches offer additional chances in the treatment and prevention of obesity by approaching children in their environment and motivating them to deal with life-style topics.

The investigators developed a motion-controlled serious game for children aged between 9 and 12 years, addressing all the three core areas nutrition, physical activity, and psychosocial factors. In addition to the motion control, a tablet is used for knowledge-based and cognitive tasks. In comparison to other studies the nutrition part not only deals with the food pyramid but also with the energy density of foods and liquids and offers a self-reflexive diagnostic tool to analyse daily food intake. Moreover, psychological aspects, especially stress and stress-coping strategies are addressed e.g. by relaxation-exercises. The game consists of two sessions, having each a duration of about 35 minutes.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the program in a cluster-randomized controlled trial in a primary school setting in children aged 9 to 12 years. Therefore, six 4th grade classes of the same school will be randomly allocated to an intervention and a control group. The intervention group will play the game within two weeks, whereas the control group will receive basic information. At baseline, two weeks after baseline and at four weeks follow-up, measurements will be performed. The primary outcome of the study is the gain of knowledge (nutrition, psychosocial aspects) measured by a self-constructed questionnaires tailored specifically for the serious game. Secondary outcomes are the acceptance of the game, changes of nutrition behaviour, physical activity and intentions of the children to follow a healthy lifestyle, measured by mostly validated questionnaires.

Conditions

• Obesity
• Child

Interventions

OTHER

The serious game KOP

The serious game transfers knowledge about nutrition (food pyramid, energy density of foods, which foods contribute to satiety and which not, energy in liquids, self-reflexive diagnostic tool to analyze daily food intake), physical activity (a motion-control to navigate through the game is partly used, relationship between energy expenditure and energy intake) and psychological aspects (relaxation-exercises, what is stress, stress-coping strategies).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Science Campus Tuebingen

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University Hospital Tuebingen

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Stephan Zipfel, Prof. Dr. · University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

9 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2015-09-30

Primary Completion

2015-10-31

Completion

2015-11-30