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Master of Public Health

The greenlight plus trial: Comparative effectiveness of a health information technology intervention vs. health communication intervention in primary care offices to prevent childhood obesity

AUTHORS

Heerman WJ , Perrin EM , Yin HS , Schildcrout JS , Delamater AM , Flower KB , Sanders L , Wood C , Kay MC , Adams LE , Rothman RL , . Contemporary clinical trials. 2022 10 30; (). 106987

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The first 1000 days of a child’s life are increasingly recognized as a critical window for establishing a healthy growth trajectory to prevent childhood obesity and its associated long-term comorbidities. The purpose of this manuscript is to detail the methods for a multi-site, comparative effectiveness trial designed to prevent childhood overweight and obesity from birth to age 2 years.

METHODS: This study is a multi-site, individually randomized trial testing the comparative effectiveness of two active intervention arms: 1) the Greenlight intervention; and 2) the Greenlight Plus intervention. The Greenlight intervention is administered by trained pediatric healthcare providers at each well-child visit from 0 to 18 months and consists of a low health literacy toolkit used during clinic visits to promote shared goal setting. Families randomized to Greenlight Plus receive the Greenlight intervention plus a health information technology intervention, which includes: 1) personalized, automated text-messages that facilitate caregiver self-monitoring of tailored and age-appropriate child heath behavior goals; and 2) a web-based, personalized dashboard that tracks child weight status, progress on goals, and electronic Greenlight content access. We randomized 900 parent-infant dyads, recruited from primary care clinics across six academic medical centers. The study’s primary outcome is weight for length trajectory from birth through 24 months.

CONCLUSIONS: By delivering a personalized and tailored health information technology intervention that is asynchronous to pediatric primary care visits, we aim to achieve improvements in child growth trajectory through two years of age among a sample of geographically, socioeconomically, racially, and ethnically diverse parent-child dyads.

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