Parents as Agents of Change in Managing Pediatric Obesity: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy versus Psychoeducation Interventions

Abstract

Background:

Obesity interventions for parents of children with obesity can improve children's weight and health. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluated whether a parent-based intervention based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles was superior to a parent-based intervention based on a psychoeducation program (PEP) in improving children's obesity.

Methods:

This study was a pragmatic, two-armed, parallel, superiority RCT. Conducted at a Canadian outpatient pediatric obesity management clinic (September 2010–January 2014), this trial included families with children 8–12 years with an age- and sex-specific BMI ≥85th percentile. The 16-week manualized interventions were similar in content and delivered to parents exclusively, with different theoretical underpinnings. The primary outcome was children's BMI z-score at postintervention (4 months). Secondary outcomes included anthropometric, lifestyle, psychosocial, and cardiometabolic variables. Data were collected at preintervention (0 months), postintervention (4 months), 10, and 16 months. Intention-to-treat analysis using linear mixed models was used to assess outcomes.

Results:

Among 52 randomly assigned children, the mean age (standard deviation) was 9.8 (1.7) years and BMI z-score was 2.2 (0.3). Mean differences in BMI z-score were not significantly different between the CBT (n = 27) and PEP (n = 25) groups from 0 to 4-, 10-, and 16-month follow-up. At 4 months, the mean difference in BMI z-score from preintervention between the CBT (−0.05, 95% CI = −0.09 to 0.00) and PEP (−0.04, 95% CI = −0.09 to 0.01) groups was −0.01 (95% CI = −0.08 to 0.06, p = 0.80). Similar results were found across all secondary outcomes.

Conclusions:

Our CBT-based intervention for parents of children with obesity was not superior in reducing BMI z-score vs. our PEP-based intervention.