Obese children are at an increased risk of becoming obese adults in comparison to their leaner peers. In addition, parental weight greatly increases the risk of becoming a heavy adult. A heavy child with a heavy parent is 2.5 times as likely of becoming an obese adult as a heavy child with thin parents. This proposal is designed to study factors that may contribute to this increased risk. These factors incluce child eating and exercise patterns, parent-child interaction patterns, food preferences, modeling and parent self-efficacy. The proposed study is a randomized controlled outcome evaluation of family-based treatment procedures in obese children with thin or heavy parents. Obese children will be stratified according to parent weight and then randomized to treatment or control group. Families will either be provided a 12 week general health education program or a parent management program focusing on changing eating and exercise habits. After this phase of treatment, children will be seen at months 6, 12 and 24 for follow-up. It is predicted that parents and obese children in families with thin or heavy parents will differ in their eating and activity patterns, their interaction patterns, and parental self-efficacy. In addition, it is predicted that children provided treatment will do better than controls over the 24 months of observation, and there will be an interaction of treatment with parent weight, so that children with thin parents will do better than children with obese parents.
