NCT07501546

Enhancing Childhood Obesity Interventions Through Digital Media Tools

An Experimental Study on Enhancing Childhood Obesity Interventions Through Digital Media Tools: A Case Study of Taipei City Hospital

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 567 (actual)
• Sponsor: Taipei City Hospital · Other Government
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a LINE Official Account (a mobile messaging platform) as a digital health education tool to enhance parental engagement with childhood obesity-related health literacy content. Parents of school-aged children (grades 1, 4, and 7) identified as obese through school health screenings in Taipei, Taiwan, who declined face-to-face clinic participation, were invited to join the LINE Official Account platform. Participants were allocated to either an immediate push notification group (receiving automated educational messages for 24 weeks from enrollment) or a delayed push notification group (receiving no push notifications for the first 12 weeks, followed by 12 weeks of push notifications). The study compared parental engagement behaviors between the two groups, including the proportion of users clicking interactive educational content and the click frequency per user, to determine whether the timing of push notification initiation affects parental engagement with digital health education content related to childhood obesity.

Detailed description

Background: Childhood obesity is a growing public health concern in Taiwan. A hospital-based childhood obesity intervention program in Taipei faced consistently low parental participation rates (6-10%), despite school-based screening identifying eligible children. To address this gap, a digital health education platform was developed using the LINE Official Account messaging application to deliver health literacy content to parents who declined face-to-face clinic visits. Intervention: The LINE Official Account platform incorporated six functional modules: Understanding Obesity, Dietary Guidance, Exercise Guidance, Family Lifestyle Habits, Course Resources, and Healthy Weight Clinic Introduction. Educational content was designed based on the Health Belief Model (addressing perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy) and Nudge theory (employing reminders, imagery, simplification, rewards, defaults, and social norms). Study Design: This was a quasi-randomized trial using systematic allocation. Parents were allocated to two groups based on the sequential order of consent form returns during telephone contact. Since the team could not predict which parents would decline clinic participation during phone calls, this systematic alternating allocation achieved a quasi-random distribution. The experimental group (Channel 1) received automated push notifications from week 1 through week 24. The control group (Channel 2) received no push notifications during weeks 1-12, with notifications beginning at week 13 through week 24. Both groups had identical educational content available on the platform at all times; the intervention variable was the timing of automated push notification delivery. Outcomes: Daily user activity data were collected from the LINE Official Account backend system over the 24-week study period. Primary outcome measures included the daily proportion of users clicking interactive educational messages and the daily click rate per user. Secondary outcomes included page view rates, system operation rates, and click differences across educational topic categories. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U tests, Chi-square tests, Spearman correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were employed. Significance level was set at p\<0.05. All analyses were performed using IBM SPSS.

Conditions

• Pediatric Obesity
• Health Literacy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Immediate Automated Push Notifications	Automated weekly push notifications delivered via LINE Official Account from week 1 through week 24. Each week's push notification included health education content covering topics such as BMI measurement reminders, dietary guidance, exercise guidance, obesity comorbidity awareness, and healthy weight clinic introduction. Content was designed based on the Health Belief Model constructs (perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, cues to action, self-efficacy) and Nudge theory strategies (reminders, imagery, simplification, rewards, defaults, social norms). The 12-week content cycle repeated in weeks 13-24.
BEHAVIORAL	Delayed Automated Push Notifications	No automated push notifications during weeks 1-12. Starting from week 13, participants received the same automated weekly push notifications as the experimental group through week 24 (identical content and delivery schedule). During weeks 1-12, the platform content was available for self-directed access but no proactive notifications were sent.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-02-03
• Primary completion: 2024-07-19
• Completion: 2024-09-30
• First posted: 2026-03-30
• Last updated: 2026-03-30

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Taiwan