Feasibility of Social-Network-Based eHealth Intervention on the Improvement of Healthy Habits among Children

Abstract

This study shows the feasibility of an eHealth solution for tackling eating habits and physical activity in the adolescent population. The participants were children from 11 to 15 years old. An intervention was carried out on 139 students in the intervention group and 91 students in the control group, in two schools during 14 weeks. The intervention group had access to the web through a user account and a password. They were able to create friendship relationships, post comments, give likes and interact with other users, as well as receive notifications and information about nutrition and physical activity on a daily basis and get (virtual) rewards for improving their habits. The control group did not have access to any of these features. The homogeneity of the samples in terms of gender, age, body mass index and initial health-related habits was demonstrated. Pre-and post-measurements were collected through self-reports on the application website. After applying multivariate analysis of variance, a significant alteration in the age-adjusted body mass index percentile was observed in the intervention group versus the control group, as well as in the PAQ-A score and the KIDMED score. It can be concluded that eHealth interventions can help to obtain healthy habits. More research is needed to examine the effectiveness in achieving adherence to these new habits.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions with health education to reduce body mass index in adolescents aged 10 to 19 years

“…BMI is also more feasible for assessment of students in schools. [34,45,50,60,62,64,65]. Table 2 provides an overview of the features of included studies and percentage of effectiveness for each component.…”

“…Most interventions were delivered by teachers (n = 22) [34-42, 45, 46, 48-50, 52-54, 57, 59, 61, 62] followed by researchers [35,55,56,58,60,[63][64][65], school nurses [44,47] and in others a school project officer and physical education teacher [43] or project managers [66].…”

“…Three studies also used social media (such as Facebook) to provide a platform for communication with the researcher (who delivered the intervention) [64], information on sessions [64], and weekly Facebook participation for parents in the GOAL programme [66]. Another intervention [65] used a social-network based eHealth intervention to improve diet and physical activity habits. The participants could use the social network platform to develop friendships and interact with each other while receiving information about nutrition and physical activity.…”

“…Overall, fourteen studies reported a significant reduction in BMI and/or BMI z-score [37-41, 43, 45, 48, 49, 52-54, 58, 65]. Of these, four studies reported significant effects in only a subset of the population (See Table 3) [40,48,49,65]. All effective studies with a significant effect on BMI outcomes had a face-to-face component for intervention delivery in the classroom, except one, which was only digital [65].…”

Baropodometric parameters variation with body weight loss: a prospective cohort study

“…Obesity is in one of the major public health problems of the 21st century and its prevalence has tripled in many European countries in the last decades (1). It is a strongly problem associated with a lower quality of life, as well as with the development of serious chronic metabolic, cardiac and circulatory pathologies and musculoskeletal disorders (2,3).…”