Jimmy Xie
Active and Healthy Grandchildren/Nietos Activos y Saludable (NAS) Intervention
Project Type:
Project
Project Sponsors:
- National Institutes of Health - NIH
Project Award:
- $54,000
Project Timeline:
2015-07-01 – 2016-06-30
Lead Principal Investigator:
Physical activity plays an important role in prevention of obesity. In childhood, physical activity is typically associated with play and recreation, which is often supported by family members such as parents. For many Latino children, the family support comes not only from parents but also from grandparents. These Latino grandparents have the potential to help parents who face barriers to support children's leisure time physical activity, but their roles in promoting Latino children's physical activities have been largely overlooked by prevention scientists. Therefore, this study is to implement and evaluate an intervention, "Active and Healthy Grandchildren/Nietos Activos y Saludable (NAS)" aimed at increasing Latino grandparents' support for grandchildren's (age 2 to 12) physical activities. The intervention, developed based on the finding of a qualitative pilot study, consists of four sessions that address 1) basic knowledge about children's physical activities; 2) physical activity resources and organizations for children in local and neighborhood communities; 3) knowledge and skills on motivating and facilitating children's physical activities; and 4) knowledge and skills on collaborating with parents in supporting children's physical activities. A mixed methods (i.e., quantitative + qualitative) design will be used to evaluate the intervention. The quantitative part will consist of 1) a randomized controlled trial that includes pre- and post-tests for the intervention and wait-list control groups or 2) a single group pre- and post-test, depending on the sample size. The qualitative part, on the other hand, will include a number of focus group interviews with the participants of the intervention. The quantitative data will be used to assess the efficacy of the intervention, while the qualitative data will provide information to better understand what worked and what didn't, to help the researcher understand better the results from the quantitative evaluation.