Successful Virtual Delivery of a Group Childhood Healthy Weight Program

Abstract

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Get Up & Go program, an established effective 10-week healthy weight program for children ages 6-14 years provided free to families, has offered the option of a synchronous virtual delivery. Pre- and postassessments include a parental questionnaire about child's health behaviors, and weight and height measurements of children. Over 3 cycles, 116 and 107 families registered for virtual and in-person delivery, respectively, with 70 (60.3%) and 84 (78.5%) attending ≥1 session (p = 0.003). More families in virtual delivery spoke Spanish (41.4% vs. 22.6%, p = 0.01), but children did not differ in age, gender, and severe obesity status, and baseline behavior scores and graduation rates were similar. Improvement from baseline in BMI_p95 was -3.71 [standard deviation (SD) 5.26] for virtual delivery and -1.95 (3.69) (p = 0.06) for in-person. Behavior questionnaire improvement [+15.9 (12.9) vs. +14.2 (12.0), p = 0.51] did not differ. The virtual implementation demonstrated good effect and may be useful in nonpandemic environments.

Keywords: behavioral intervention; bilingual intervention; community intervention; family intervention; synchronous group virtual health.