Healthy Families: Transforming Care for Obese Children at NYU Lutheran Family Health Centers

Childhood obesity is a contributing factor to health complications such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and asthma. It is of particular concern among Hispanic populations in the United States as that group has the fastest growing childhood obesity rate. Nearly two in five Hispanic children ages 2 to 19 are overweight or obese. This program aims to test whether it is beneficial to routinize a multi-disciplinary pediatric weight management program within the highest volume clinic (NYU-LFHC Women, Adolescents and Children), and to add a home-visit component to reinforce teaching on food selection and preparation. The intervention will include 27-hour intervention session which will be distributed into 12-session series over a 3 month period. The program will target Hispanic children between the ages of 9 and 11 with a Body Mass Index (BMI) between the 95th and 99th percentiles. To assess the effectiveness of this program, the investigators propose to conduct a general prospective study using randomized pre-test and post-test control group design with minimal risk for participants.