Program gets adolescents to eat better, move more

	Tweet

A home-based program that combines a doctor’s advice with computer assessment, mailings and phone calls may help teens become more active and improve their diet, a study hints.

Many adolescents fail to meet national guidelines for participation in regular moderate or vigorous physical activity or dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, fiber, or total dietary fat.

In a randomized, controlled study, Dr. Kevin Patrick, of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues assessed a home healthcare-based intervention to improve levels of physical activity and nutrition behaviors in adolescents between the ages of 11 and 15 years.

They randomly allocated 878 adolescents to a control group or to the intervention, which consisted of primary care, office-based, computer-assisted diet, physical activity assessment, and goal setting, followed by 1 year of mail and telephone counseling.

Adolescents in the home-care intervention group significantly reduced their sedentary behaviors compared with those in the control group. This was seen in both boys and girls.

Boys reported more active days per week, and girls reported having more servings of fruits and vegetables than boys, although the difference was not significant.

“More girls in the (intervention) group compared with the control group met the guideline for maximum percentage of daily calories from saturated fat at 12 months,” Patrick and colleagues write. More boys in the intervention group, compared with the control group, met the physical activity guides at 1-year follow-up.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, February 2006. 

RELATED STORIES:
School-based intervention shows benefit at age 21   Early parenting plays key role in infants’ physiological response to stress   Children with newly diagnosed epilepsy at risk for cognitive problems   Snoring in kids may portend hyperactivity   It’s Time for Parents to Turn the Tide on Childhood Obesity   US adult obesity still high, but recent data suggest rates may have stabilized   Talk to your babies   Simple Exercise Improves Lung Function in Children with CF   Childhood obesity linked to health habits, not heredity: U-M study   Inequities exists in disease burden, health care and access for minority children   Tonsillectomy boosts quality of life: studies   Encouraging Laughter, Preventing Tears in the Playground

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]