Parents as Agents of Change (PAC) in pediatric weight management: The protocol for the PAC randomized clinical trial

Parents as Agents of Change (PAC) in pediatric weight management: The protocol for the PAC randomized clinical trial

BMC Pediatrics, August 2012

22866998

Geoff D C Ball, Kathryn A Ambler, Rachel A Keaschuk, Rhonda J Rosychuk, Nicholas L Holt, John C Spence, Mary M Jetha, Arya M Sharma, Amanda S Newton

There is an urgent need to develop and evaluate weight management interventions to address childhood obesity. Recent research suggests that interventions designed for parents exclusively, which have been named parents as agents of change (PAC) approaches, have yielded positive outcomes for managing pediatric obesity. To date, no research has combined a PAC intervention approach with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to examine whether these combined elements enhance intervention effectiveness. This paper describes the protocol our team is using to examine two PAC-based interventions for pediatric weight management. We hypothesize that children with obesity whose parents complete a CBT-based PAC intervention will achieve greater reductions in adiposity and improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors, lifestyle behaviours, and psychosocial outcomes than children whose parents complete a psycho-education-based PAC intervention (PEP).