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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2013 Sep;36(1):41-53.
doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2013.05.013. Epub 2013 Jun 5.

The COPE healthy lifestyles TEEN randomized controlled trial with culturally diverse high school adolescents: baseline characteristics and methods

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk  1 , Stephanie Kelly, Diana Jacobson, Michael Belyea, Gabriel Shaibi, Leigh Small, Judith O'Haver, Flavio Francisco Marsiglia
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

The COPE healthy lifestyles TEEN randomized controlled trial with culturally diverse high school adolescents: baseline characteristics and methods

Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk et al. Contemp Clin Trials. 2013 Sep.

Abstract

Obesity and mental health disorders remain significant public health problems in adolescents. Substantial health disparities exist with minority youth experiencing higher rates of these problems. Schools are an outstanding venue to provide teens with skills needed to improve their physical and mental health, and academic performance. In this paper, the authors describe the design, intervention, methods and baseline data for a randomized controlled trial with 779 culturally diverse high-school adolescents in the southwest United States. Aims for this prevention study include testing the efficacy of the COPE TEEN program versus an attention control program on the adolescents' healthy lifestyle behaviors, Body Mass Index (BMI) and BMI%, mental health, social skills and academic performance immediately following the intervention programs, and at six and 12 months post interventions. Baseline findings indicate that greater than 40% of the sample is either overweight (n = 148, 19.00%) or obese (n = 182, 23.36%). The predominant ethnicity represented is Hispanic (n = 526, 67.52%). At baseline, 15.79% (n = 123) of the students had above average scores on the Beck Youth Inventory Depression subscale indicating mildly (n = 52, 6.68%), moderately (n = 47, 6.03%), or extremely (n = 24, 3.08%) elevated scores (see Table 1). Anxiety scores were slightly higher with 21.56% (n = 168) reporting responses suggesting mildly (n = 81, 10.40%), moderately (n = 58, 7.45%) or extremely (n = 29, 3.72%) elevated scores. If the efficacy of the COPE TEEN program is supported, it will offer schools a curriculum that can be easily incorporated into high school health courses to improve adolescent healthy lifestyle behaviors, psychosocial outcomes and academic performance.

Keywords: Adolescents; High school; Mental health; Overweight; Prevention; RCT.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Hypothesized effects of the COPE intervention.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Consort flow chart-recruitment through baseline date collection.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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