▶ Research team “Doctor consultation + health management text, effect on reducing obesity in 24-month-old babies”
A study has shown that providing health knowledge-based baby health management text services to parents along with health counseling from a pediatrician is effective in reducing obesity in infants and toddlers within 24 months of age.
On the 4th (Korean time), Professor William Heerman’s team at Vanderbilt University randomly assigned 900 parent-infant pairs to a group that received pediatrician consultation and a group that provided counseling and health information services in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). They revealed that they obtained these results by examining the baby’s growth for two years.
Childhood obesity often leads to adult obesity and often has long-term adverse health effects such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, making it a task for health authorities in each country to prevent overweight and obesity that appear from infancy.
The research team pointed out that although infant growth is considered a predictor of long-term obesity and cardiovascular disease, most intervention methods designed to prevent obesity in the first 24 months of life have failed.
In this study, the research team recruited 900 pairs of parents and babies born at six hospitals in the United States. 451 couples participated in a pediatrician counseling group, and 449 couples participated in a group that provided counseling and baby health management information through responsive text messages and web bulletin boards. The babies were randomly assigned to groups and observed changes in their weight/height (kg/m) for 24 months.
As a result, the average weight/height of the doctor consultation group was 15.1㎏/m, and the doctor consultation + health management information service group was 14.8㎏/m. When counseling and health management information service were combined, the weight/height at 24 months of age was 14.8㎏/m. It was found to decrease by 0.33 kg/m.
The proportion of overweight or obese babies at 24 months was also higher in the doctor consultation group (24.5%) than in the doctor consultation and health management information service group (23.2%).
Additionally, health management information services have been shown to be effective in racially and ethnically diverse groups, including those at high risk for childhood obesity.
The research team said, “These results show that adding a health information-based digital information service to a pediatrician’s health management consultation can lead to healthier weight changes and reduce the incidence of obesity by the age of two.”
He added, “This effect of reducing obesity in infants and young children suggests that health management information services could have a significant impact at the population level if implemented on a large scale,” adding, “Additional research is needed to ensure widespread implementation.”
◆ 출처 : JAMA, : William J. Heerman et al., ‘A Digital Health Behavior Intervention to Prevent Childhood Obesity The Greenlight Plus Randomized Clinical Trial’,
