Conmigo: A Mother-daughter Intervention to Promote Physical Activity

Regular physical activity (PA) contributes to reduced risk of obesity, chronic disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, and can improve emotional and mental health, learning, productivity, and social skills. Latina girls are less likely to meet guidelines for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) than non-Hispanic white girls; factors that contribute to low PA rates among Latina girls include sex role expectations, low PA competency, few active role models, lack of parental support for PA, and lack of access to resources. The goal of this study, informed by social cognitive theory and family systems theory, is to design, implement, and evaluate an intervention promoting physical activity among Latina pre-adolescent girls (aged 8-11) and their mothers. The intervention is based on evidence suggesting that parent-child interventions and single-sex interventions are more effective at improving PA. Mothers and daughters will participate in a 12-week virtual intervention where they will engage in weekly 1.5-hour sessions that incorporate didactic teaching, skill-building, interactive discussions, and PA. Each session will include at least 30 minutes of PA. The intervention will be compared with a control condition that will receive an abbreviated version of the intervention following completion of all measurement points. Ninety mother-daughter dyads will be randomly assigned to the intervention or the wait-list control condition. The primary aim is to determine whether the intervention will increase MVPA among Latina girls in the intervention condition relative to those in the control condition. The investigators hypothesize that daughters participating in Conmigo will have higher minutes of MVPA at M2 and M3 compared to girls in the delayed treatment control condition.