PCORI Approves Funds for Children

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) https://pcori.org has approved a five year $4.5 million funding award to go to the research team at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center https://www.pbrc.edu.

This study is important since families of children with obesity struggle to decide whether to approach their primary care provider or start with more intensive behavioral services typically found outside the primary care setting.

Researchers will evaluate two treatments for children who have obesity. Over a 5 year period, the research team will examine if it is more effective to provide counseling by a primary care provider focusing on healthy eating and activity habits or whether it is more effective to provide a combination of provider counseling and family-based treatment delivered by a trained counselor for both children and parents.

“We will be working side-by-side with families, doctors, and other health providers to test our science-backed weight management programs in pediatric clinics throughout Louisiana,” said Dr, Amanda Staiano, Director of the Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical and also the Primary Investigator for the Louisiana portion of the study.

Pennington Biomedical will recruit 432 families in South Louisiana for the study with each family to spend 18 months in the study. Pennington Biomedical will also collect data from researchers in Missouri and New York and analyze the data while Pennington Biomedical will oversee patient and family engagement efforts.