Parenting approaches to prevent obesity in very food-motivated young children
Official title: Deconstructing food parenting approaches to obesity prevention for the highly food motivated child
Funded at Temple Univ of the Commonwealth · NIH-11247541 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project looks at different ways parents feed and manage meals to help prevent unhealthy weight gain in preschool children who are strongly motivated by food.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Temple Univ of the Commonwealth NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Philadelphia, United States) |
| Project start | March 1, 2023 |
| Project end | December 31, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $634,462 |
| NIH project number | 5R01DK132642-04 |
| Project ID | NIH-11247541 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal participants are caregivers of preschool-aged children—especially those whose child shows strong interest in food—who can take part in an 18-month follow-up and short smartphone-based reports.
✕Less likely to help
Families without young children or children who do not show high food motivation are unlikely to get direct benefit from this specific work.
What this research studies
If you join, researchers will follow 205 caregiver-child pairs over 18 months as children move from preschool into elementary school. They will compare families with children who are highly food motivated to those who are not, using surveys, direct measures of eating and BMI, and real-time ecological momentary assessment via short smartphone reports. The team will record how often, what types, and how consistently parents use specific food parenting practices. The goal is to identify practical parenting behaviors that help prevent excessive eating and unhealthy BMI gains in food-motivated children.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could give parents tailored, evidence-based feeding strategies to reduce overeating and lower children's risk of obesity.
How similar studies have gone: There is limited existing evidence on tailoring food parenting to highly food-motivated children, so this is relatively novel rather than a well-established approach.
Where this research is happening
-
Temple Univ of the Commonwealth
Philadelphia, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Fisher, Jennifer Orlet — Temple Univ of the Commonwealth
- Study coordinator: Fisher, Jennifer Orlet
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.