Study protocol: Evaluation of 'JenMe', a commercially-delivered weight management program for adolescents: A randomised controlled trial
Abstract
Background: Early lifestyle intervention with overweight and obese adolescents could help to avoid serious health
events in early adulthood, ultimately alleviating some of the strain on the public health system due to obesity-related
morbidity. Commercial weight loss programs have wide reach into the community setting, and have demonstrated
success in long term weight management in adults, beyond that of current public health care. Commercial
weight-management programs have not been evaluated as a method of delivery for overweight and obese
adolescents. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a new adolescent weight management program in a commercial
environment.
Methods: One hundred and forty adolescents, 13 to 17 years old, will be randomised to either a weight
management program intervention or a wait-listed group for 12 weeks. The commercial program will consist of
a combined dietary and lifestyle approach targeting improved health behaviours for weight-loss or weight-stability.
Participants will be overweight or obese (above the 85th percentile for BMI) and without existing co-morbidities.
Outcome measures will be assessed at baseline and after 12 weeks. Primary outcome measures will be changes
in BMI Z-score and waist-height ratio. Secondary outcome measures will include changes in behaviour, physical
activity and psychosocial wellbeing. Intervention participants will be followed up at 6 months following completion of
the initial program. Ethics approval has been granted from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee
(CF11/3687–2011001940).
Discussion: This independent evaluation of a weight management program for adolescents, delivered in a commercial
setting, will provide initial evidence for the effectiveness of such programs; which may offer adolescents an avenue of
weight-management with ongoing support prior to the development of obesity related co-morbidities.
Journal Title
BMC Public Health
Volume
15
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2015 Dordevic et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.2015 Dordevic et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Note
Page numbers are not for citation purposes. Instead, this article has the unique article number of 563.
Subject
Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified