Participation in a Virtual Pediatric Intensive Lifestyle Intervention During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Published in: Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) Md.), 2022-11, Vol.30, p.222-222
• Main Authors: Samuels, Stephanie, Wang, Grace, McCollum, Sarah, Li, Zhongyao, Carcamo, José Mauricio Hernandez, Fisher, Giselle, Shabanova, Veronika, Savoye, Mary, Sharifi, Mona
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Enrollments; Pandemics; Pediatrics; Telemedicine
• ISSN: 1930-7381; 1930-739X

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption of telehealth, yet little is known about the impact of the transition of inperson intensive lifestyle interventions (ILIs) to virtual delivery on participant engagement and attrition. We examined the in-person to virtual transition of Bright Bodies (BB), a well-established, family-based pediatric ILI with demonstrated effectiveness. Methods: Among new participants in their first BB program, we compared engagement (defined as the proportion of classes attended of those available to participants based on enrollment timing) delivered virtually during the pandemic (4/2020 - 3/2022) versus in-person pre-pandemic (1/2018 - 12/2019). We included all participants who enrolled in BB within a sufficient timeframe to attend >10 class days. In stratified analyses, we examined the extent to which engagement in both virtual and in-person periods varied by participants age, sex, season of enrollment, and enrollment timing relative to program start. Results: New participants pre-pandemic (N = 67, in-person) and during-pandemic (N = 73, virtual) had similar baseline characteristics (55% female, mean ± SD age 11.3 ± 2.6 years). We did not observe differences in engagement by age, sex, or season in either virtual or in-person BB programs. While there were no between-group differences in engagement among participants who joined early, enrollment timing was differentially associated with engagement in virtual versus in-person periods (p = 0.048 for interaction between time period and class number of enrollment). Participants in both time periods experienced lower engagement if they enrolled late, but the median proportion of classes attended out of available classes decreased by an additional 5.5% (95% CI: 0.1%, 11.0%) for each class number delay in enrollment timing relative to the program start among participants in the virtual BB as compared to in-person BB. Conclusions: While our analyses are limited by sample size, results did not show meaningful differences in engagement between in-person and virtual BB programs among children who enrolled at the program start; late enrollment negatively affected engagement in both groups but was more pronounced in the virtual BB. Our findings support continued study of virtual pediatric ILIs and ongoing efforts to increase participant engagement in ILIs via telehealth.