Purpose: Physical activity (PA) is linked to many health benefits. However, many children and adults do not meet PA recommendations. Specifically, Mexican-heritage (MH) families are less physically active and at greater risk for obesity and related co-morbidities than the general population. Culturally-tailored programs are suggested to support MH families in healthy PA behaviors. This presentation describes development and process evaluation of the ¡Haz Espacio para Papi! (Make Room for Daddy!) PA curriculum tailored to support healthy activity behaviors amongst MH families, but focused on the father/child relationship.

Methods: Academic-based and promotora-researchers simultaneously developed a six-week curriculum in Spanish and English to maintain semantic congruence. Elements of the Family Systems Theory and Social Cognitive Theory were used to theoretically ground the creation of activities. The curriculum included weekly interactive lessons provided on weekends and take-home challenges focused on father-child co-participation in light-to-moderate PA. Participating families consisted of child (aged 9-11), mother, and father. Families (n=47) were divided into five groups in a step-wedge intervention design. Weekly telephone calls were placed to adult participants to secure qualitative evaluation data. Thematic analysis was used to classify and describe participants reaction to the curriculum.

Results: A mean of 38 families participated in mid-week calls for a total of 190 process evaluation calls across all family groups and all weeks. Overall, 75.8% (n=144) of all calls made documented families had tried the physical activities at home at least once in prior week. In an overwhelming majority of calls, families said they liked the program as is (n=182 calls, 95.8%). When asked what they thought was the most valuable part of the lesson during calls, in 88 calls (46.3%) families mentioned the time spent together as a family was most important to them.

Conclusions: This presentation adds context to family-centered, father-focused health programs within MH populations which is important as fathers have been underrepresented in family centered programing. Positive responses by families speak to the success of culturally and contextually tailoring this curriculum to MH families.

Purpose: An increasing number of studies are collecting raw tri-axial acceleration signal from the wrist.  Raw acceleration signal increases the reproducibility and comparability of derived physical activity (PA) metrics; while the wrist placement reduces data loss due to non-wear and allows investigators to monitor sleep duration. However, accelerometer data processing methods for the wrist are less developed. Cut-point methods developed for waist-mounted accelerometers are not appropriate for the wrist because they do not account for upper limb movements during sedentary (SED) or light intensity activities with little or no ambulation. This presentation provides an overview of the machine learning methods used to process the wrist accelerometer data collected in the ¡Haz Espacio para Papi! Study.

Methods: ActiGraph GT9X accelerometers were used to estimate daily time in SED, light-intensity PA (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous intensity PA (MVPA) in parents and children. Accelerometers were worn on the non-dominant wrist 24 hrs/day for 7 consecutive days. Raw acceleration signal (30 Hz) was processed into PA metrics using previously validated machine learned random forest (RF) activity classifiers trained for activity recognition in adults (Pavey 2017) and children (Trost 2014). For comparison purposes, PA metrics were calculated using ENMO cut-points developed by Hildebrand (2014).

Results: Accelerometer data from 117 parents and 58 children were processed into daily SED, LPA, and MVPA. Across all time points, the average number of valid monitoring days available for analysis was 33.1 ± 13.1 and 26.2 ± 8.8 days for parents and children, respectively.  Among adults, RF predicted lower SED (373.1 ± 76.2 vs 688 .3 ± 77.7 min/d), higher LPA (534.6 ± 80.6 vs 144.3 ± 29.7 min/d), and lower MVPA  (80.5 ± 25.2 vs 132.7 ± 51.3 min/d) than ENMO. Among children, RF predicted higher SED (623.1 ± 56.6 vs 511.3 ± 68.9 min/d) and lower LPA (230.0 ± 50.4 vs 354.9 ± 61.2 min/d) than ENMO. MVPA levels were almost identical (53.8 ± 14.1 vs 52.5 ± 20.2 min/d). 

Conclusions:  Machine learned activity classification algorithms for wrist accelerometer data are viable and more valid option for interventions studies assessing PA outcomes in adults and/or children.

Purpose: Physical activity(PA) is associated with numerous health benefits. However, many do not meet PA recommendations. Specifically, Mexican-heritage(MH) families report less PA and are often at greater risk for obesity and related co-morbidities than the general U.S. population. Family-centered PA approaches, particularly active engagement by MH fathers, may support family PA. This presentation describes PA outcomes of MH children, fathers, and mothers who participated in ¡Haz Espacio para Papi! (Make Room for Daddy!), a health program targeting healthy eating, PA, and family dynamics change tailored to support MH families.

Methods: Participating families (n=59, n=43 complete cases), consisting of child (M age: 10.1[SD=0.9]), father (M age: 39.9[SD=8.2]), and mother (M age: 36.2[SD=6.2]), were randomized into five clusters in a step-wedge design. PA was measured using ActiGraph GT9X accelerometers processed with machine learned random forest PA classification models for adults and children. Statistical analyses of intervention effects for moderate-to-vigorous PA(MVPA), light PA(LPA), and sedentary time for child, father, and mother, were conducted using linear mixed models (PROCMIXED, SAS-v.9.2). 

Results: There was one statistically significant outcome –mothers’ LPA– with an effect estimate of -23.2 (-34.0, -12.4, p<0.0001). For most outcomes random slope proved a better model since there were clear differences in the intervention effect across clusters. For example, the overall child MVPA estimated treatment effect, adjusting for time and cluster, was a mean increase of 4.36 (p=0.38). However, in Cluster 1 the estimate of the treatment effect using the estimated posterior slopes was 13.46, reflecting a larger increase in child MVPA observed in this cluster. On the other hand, Cluster 2 had an estimated decrease in child MVPA post-treatment (-2.29) adjusting for time effect.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated the feasibility of a father-focused health program for MH families. Although we did not observe overall increases in LPA or MVPA, or decreases in sedentary time, we observed heterogeneity across clusters with several clusters demonstrating increased MVPA for children and fathers and decreased sedentary time for children from pre- to post-intervention. The presentation will further discuss findings and implications of this father-focused program and next steps.