Enhancing BodyWorks: a Canine Health Literacy Module

Summary

Dog ownership can serve as a vehicle for large-scale multi-level public health interventions, especially for pediatric overweight and obesity, due to dogs' unique place in children and adolescents' social networks.This study develops and tests a novel approach to design a Canine Health-Literacy module to enhance a Comprehensive Family Lifestyle Intervention BodyWorks, for dog-owning adolescents who have been diagnosed with overweight or obesity, and their parents. The results are anticipated to make an important step towards addressing the overweight and obesity epidemic among both people and companion dogs in the U.S.

Conditions

• Overweight and Obesity
• Overweight Adolescents

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

BodyWorks Intervention

BodyWorks (BW), a Comprehensive Behavioral Family Lifestyle Interventions (CBFLI), a national, empirically validated, curriculum-based 7-week program will be implemented (Borden et al., 2012; DHHS, 2013)

BEHAVIORAL

Canine Curriculum

Using our team's expertise in veterinary medicine, human-animal interaction, and animal behavior modification, develop an empirically-based, 7-week module on canine health and behavior.

BEHAVIORAL

Ecological Momentary Assessment

Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA) of physical activity will be conducted using mobile phones for 7 weeks of the BW program, prospectively collecting data on 4 days per week (Saturday to Tuesday) (Dunton et al., 2011; Liao et al., 2016).

BEHAVIORAL

Physical Activity Trackers

Three types of consumer-grade wireless personal activity trackers (PATs): FitBit Inspire® designed for children 8 years of age and older; FitBit Inspire® for adults (Diaz et al., 2015; Espinoza et al., 2017); and FitBark®, wireless, global positioning systems (GPS)-based personal activity trackers for dogs (Patel et al., 2017). This approach will allow us to evaluate quantity (number of steps) and intensity of physical activity in the adolescents, their parents, and their dogs, as well as to synchronize Fitbit Ace and FitBark to establish the amount of shared physical activity of adolescents and their dogs.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Southern California

  collaborator OTHER

• Tufts Medical Center

  collaborator OTHER

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

  collaborator NIH

• Children's Hospital Los Angeles

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Larry Yin, MD, MSPH · Children's Hospital Los Angeles

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

9 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-02-27

Primary Completion

2024-12-31

Completion

2024-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations