TY - JOUR
T1 - Fammeal
T2 - A Gamified Mobile Application for Parents and Children to Help Healthcare Centers Treat Childhood Obesity
AU - Afonso, Lisa
AU - Rodrigues, Rui
AU - Reis, Eduardo
AU - Miller, Kylee
AU - Castro, Joana
AU - Parente, Nuno
AU - Teixeira, Carina
AU - Fraga, Ana
AU - Torres, Sandra
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 30, 2019; revised June 18, 2020; accepted August 7, 2020. Date of publication August 11, 2020; date of current version December 17, 2020. This work was supported in part by the Center for Psychology at the University of Porto, the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT UIDB/00050/2020 and PD/BD/128309/2017) and in part by EU FEDER through COMPETE 2020 program (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007294). (Corresponding author: Lisa Afonso.) Lisa Afonso and Sandra Torres are with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and with the Center for Psychology, University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal (e-mail: lafonso@fpce.up.pt; storres@fpce.up.pt).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Healthcare centers are ideal settings to identify and motivate parents to adhere to healthier lifestyles in order to reverse their child's excessive weight. However, such promotions are time- and resource-consuming, and primary health care needs new approaches to engage parents. In this article, we present an app for that purpose, with tailored recommendations for parents regarding young children's lifestyles (eating, drinking, moving, and sleeping habits) with gamification mechanics for parents, and a serious game for their children, aged 3-6 years. Healthcare center based questionnaires were used to assess parent's acceptance of the app. We also determined their enrollment and retention rates with a pilot study, in order to test the implementation of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in the future (pilot trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03881280). In the pilot study, we tested their engagement with the app during a four-week period through a monitoring website. In the acceptance test (n = 13), parents rated the app a median score of seven on a ten-point scale. In the pilot study (n = 21), all parents in the intervention group used the app. The retention rate was 71.4%. This study indicated some areas of improvement related to gaming mechanics in order to increase participation. Healthcare center's professionals and parents of children with overweight/obesity accepted this innovative approach. In addition, it is feasible to test its impact on children's lifestyle by conducting an RCT in the future.
AB - Healthcare centers are ideal settings to identify and motivate parents to adhere to healthier lifestyles in order to reverse their child's excessive weight. However, such promotions are time- and resource-consuming, and primary health care needs new approaches to engage parents. In this article, we present an app for that purpose, with tailored recommendations for parents regarding young children's lifestyles (eating, drinking, moving, and sleeping habits) with gamification mechanics for parents, and a serious game for their children, aged 3-6 years. Healthcare center based questionnaires were used to assess parent's acceptance of the app. We also determined their enrollment and retention rates with a pilot study, in order to test the implementation of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in the future (pilot trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03881280). In the pilot study, we tested their engagement with the app during a four-week period through a monitoring website. In the acceptance test (n = 13), parents rated the app a median score of seven on a ten-point scale. In the pilot study (n = 21), all parents in the intervention group used the app. The retention rate was 71.4%. This study indicated some areas of improvement related to gaming mechanics in order to increase participation. Healthcare center's professionals and parents of children with overweight/obesity accepted this innovative approach. In addition, it is feasible to test its impact on children's lifestyle by conducting an RCT in the future.
KW - Children
KW - gamification
KW - mHealth
KW - obesity (OB)
KW - parenting
KW - serious games
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089453257&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85089453257&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TG.2020.3015804
DO - 10.1109/TG.2020.3015804
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089453257
SN - 2475-1502
VL - 12
SP - 351
EP - 360
JO - IEEE Transactions on Games
JF - IEEE Transactions on Games
IS - 4
M1 - 9165016
ER -