Wearable Activity Monitors as Part of a Childhood Obesity Treatment Program

Abstract

PURPOSE: It is well known that childhood obesity has become a common issue in the United States (1), and that obesity contributes to a multitude of chronic diseases and negative health conditions (2). One of the biggest challenges in the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity is that the goal of these programs is primarily to modify behaviors that occur outside of the program space. The purpose of this study was to summarize the findings from a 6-month program that used wearable activity monitors (WAM) as part of a clinical obesity treatment program for fifteen children in Arizona (USA) between December 2015 to November 2017. METHODS: Obese children were referred to participate in this program by their pediatrician. Participants were provided a WAM that was used to monitor their physical activity (PA) levels, heart rate, and sleep habits. For the first week, participants were instructed not to change their behaviors so that baseline PA data could be collected. Subsequently, appropriate step and heart rate zone goals were set and progressively increased each week that a participant met their previous goal. RESULTS: Adherence to wearing the WAM was high, with only about 1.3% of activity data and 3% of sleep data missing throughout the entire program. Three children dropped out of the study before the program was completed. For the children who completed the program, modest improvements were noted for step count, and healthy sleep habits were found to be positively correlated with PA. In baseline data collection, the children walked on average 8,900 steps per day. In the final week, the children recorded 9,784 daily steps on average, representing approximately a 10% increase in the average number of steps taken. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, childhood obesity treatment programs focus heavily on modifying behaviors that occur outside of the clinic setting. A WAM appears to be a feasible approach to continuously monitor and increase the PA of obese children. Including WAM and progressive goal setting in a clinical obesity treatment program for children may be an effective method to increase PA levels outside of the clinical setting. Further exploration of the link between healthy sleep habits and PA could yield additional findings useful to childhood obesity treatment and prevention.