Program Gets Families to Live Healthier

More yellow journalism and lies. The program proved no such results.

Short-term benefits were seen from an employer-sponsored online wellness program -- coupled with a cash incentive -- aimed at getting families to practice healthier behaviors, researchers found.

The program resulted in improvements in healthy eating, physical activity, and amount of entertainment screen time -- with the largest gains being in the frequency of physical activity -- among almost 12,000 people who completed the program, Martín-J. Sepúlveda, MD, of the IBM Corporation, and colleagues reported online ahead of the publication of the October issue of Pediatrics.

Although the study did not include a control group, "the results ... show that employers can activate parents and support a role for employers in community-based strategies for obesity prevention in children," Sepúlveda and co-authors commented...

Sepúlveda and his colleagues noted some limitations to their study, including its observational design without a control group, the lack of information on weight and other biometric measures for participants, the use of self-reported behavioral data, and possible selection bias.

Do not fall for the hype.

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