Disseminating a Multilingual Virtual Family-Based Childhood Obesity Management Program

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has further exacerbated unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, increasing the risk of childhood obesity, particularly among certain minority population groups. Our team is working with the Childhood Obesity Foundation (a knowledge user) to design, evaluate and scale up a “made in B.C.” 10-week healthy lifestyle program called Generation Health for families with children aged 8-12 years who want to be on a healthier lifestyle path. However, a key challenge facing program dissemination is accommodating those at-risk families who have trouble understanding English. This has significantly influenced program uptake and effectiveness for those families. To address this, the aim of this project is to 1) leverage artificial language translation tools to make our virtual program accessible in the three most spoken non-English languages (Punjabi, Chinese, Spanish ) in Canada; 2) collaborate with our knowledge user to disseminate the program across B.C. We have amassed a multi-disciplinary team with extensive experience in delivering and disseminating virtual family-based interventions. This project has the potential to be incredibly impactful to families for whom English is a barrier.