Rates of overweight and obesity in Australian children are not stabilising and determining the optimal delivery of care is challenging. Data from research shows that family wide change with behavioural, dietary and physical activity interventions from a multidisciplinary team achieve the best outcomes (1). The Healthy Kids Program (HKP) at John Hunter Children’s Hospital delivers a one-hour program each week for 8 weeks to parents and carers of children 2-17 years who are above healthy weight (95th percentile). Children attend in weeks 2 and 8 for physical activity and anthropometry measurements. Families who attend are generally from lower socioeconomic regions and our service aims to develop skills in parents to help achieve healthy behaviours for the whole family.
Pre -post data was collected from 02/02/2023-09/05/2024 at start and again at completion (8 weeks) using the Healthy Habits Questionnaire (HHQ). The HHQ included selected validated questions from the NSW Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey (2) and the NSW Population Health Survey (3).
Due to attrition, end of program data was only available for 43 % of parents.
Overall positive changes to lifestyle were made. Mean change in daily intake per child showed: increase in water by 125mls, decrease in fruit juice by 99mls, and vegetable consumption improved by ¾ serve. Use of screens decreased by 53 minutes and physical activity increased by 1.5 hours. There was no change in sleep hygiene and mealtime behaviour.
Body Mass Index (BMI) and BMI z scores remained stable 30.6±7.4 to 30.3±7.6 and 2.49±1.28 to 2.78±1.24 respectively.
Our program shows that group education to improve healthy habits in this population is effective in the short term, however, the findings cannot be generalised to those who did not fill in the HHQ. Future research could be directed to sustaining healthy habits and engagement of families.