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Category: Project

Description: The rates of childhood overweight (OW) and obesity (OB) significantly increased in the past decades. The prevalence of children with OW and OB (OW/OB children) in Portugal is one of the highest in the European Union and in the OECD area. A comprehensive approach to prevent and treat childhood OW and OB is needed. Since parents have a crucial role in children's diet and physical activity, interventions should include the family's lifestyle and focus on the parenting practices. Programs targeting parents by increasing parents' awareness and responsibility in providing environments that lead children to healthy behaviors are imperative in the treatment of childhood OW and OB. Considering the beneficial effects of parents as agents of change in pediatric weight management, this study's purpose is to implement and evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of Group Lifestyle Triple P (GLTP) in a Portuguese sample of parents of OW/OB children. This is particularly relevant as, to date, there are no such structured interventions available in Portugal. GLTP is the only evidenced-based program that teaches parents of children with OW (not only with OB) to use positive parenting in order to promote a healthy lifestyle in their families, through healthy eating and physical activity. It stems from the Triple P - Positive Parenting Program, and targets parents of OW/OB children aged 5 to 10 through a 14-session intervention. It aims to decrease child's weight and weight-related problem behavior, by increasing parents' self-efficacy in managing the child's behavior, and by decreasing the use of ineffective parenting practices. To accomplish the study's purposes, a RCT with parents of OW and OB children and a change process analysis will be conducted. The outcome variables include the child's anthropometric measures and weight-related problem behavior, parents' self-efficacy in managing the child's weight-related problem, parental feeding style, parenting practices, parental self-regulation, and parental perception of change. A total of 120 parents of OW/OB children, aged 5 to 10, will be recruited from the Nutrition Unit of the Pediatric Department (NUPD) of Porto University Central Hospital (Centro Materno-Infantil do Norte, CMIN). Participants will be randomly allocated to the experimental and control conditions. Control condition includes treatment as usual in the health care services. The study will include three assessment waves (pre-test, post-test and 6-month follow-up). Participants of the control group will have the opportunity to receive the intervention after the RCT evaluation. With this study we expect to obtain knowledge on the effectiveness of GLTP as secondary prevention tool of childhood OW and OB, contributing to the development of public health and health care policies and to a decrease of the significant health care costs inherent to childhood OW and OB.