Getting to kids and parents very early in life may be key to preventing obesity, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Can a texting intervention to parents of very young children prevent the development of obesity in their offspring? A study co-led by Johns Hopkins pediatrics expert Eliana Perrin shows the answer is yes.

Perrin: We enrolled 900 kids. We did it from six academic medical centers and those six centers were affiliated with lots and lots of clinics, some of which were teaching clinics and some of which were not. We recruited parents from the newborn nursery or from their first pediatrics visit. The average age of enrollment was five days old. Basically we were seeing parents at the very beginning of their journey at least with that child and for the first borns it was their journey of parenting.       :31

The study followed kids for their first two years of life, with those children whose parents got the texting intervention, which was really goal setting covering diet, sleep, activity and screentime, having much healthier weights and trajectories than those whose parents did not. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.