# Intervention to promote physical activation and improve sleep and feeding practices in infants for preventing obesity early in life (The Baby-Act Trial)

> **NIH NIH U54** · UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO MED SCIENCES · 2020 · $384,054

## Abstract

Project Summary
Infant obesity is increasing in the U.S., particularly among Hispanics. Rapid weight gain during critical periods of
infancy increases the risk of obesity in childhood, continuing into adulthood and increasing the risk of chromic
diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. This serious health threat could be prevented through multifaceted
interventions during infancy that address multiple risk factors associated with early obesity development. Current
evidence suggests that trials should focus particularly on risk factors related to physical activity, sleep, nutrition,
satiety, stress and increasing parenting skills, and should be delivered at multiple levels, using population-level
programs to be translatable, cost-effective and sustainable. To this end, interventions carried out within the
federal WIC program provide a potentially powerful way of fostering early healthy behaviors and helping in
preventing obesity. Successful interventions done as part of the WIC program could be translated into their
policies, since each state develops its own educational materials and determines how nutritional education is
implemented. Our goal is to test the clinical effectiveness of a multi-faceted and multi-leveled intervention
focusing on three main areas: physical activity (i.e., infant activation, sleep and screen time), nutrition and
growth monitoring, framed in the Health Self-Empowerment Theory, and delivered through the WIC Program
using a multi-media approach. The physical activity and growth-monitoring components are new to the WIC
curriculum, while the nutrition component is based on WIC guidelines but delivered differently (through self-
empowerment-based messages and multi-media based). For this, we will conduct a cluster-randomized
controlled trial among pregnant women participants of the Puerto Rico WIC (PR-WIC) program. An equal
number of clinics will be randomized to the control (usual care) arm or to the WIC+ (usual care + intervention)
arm in the San Juan area. The lifestyle intervention will focus on age-appropriate infant physical activation,
healthy sleep and limiting screen time, healthy dietary patterns and growth monitoring. The content will be
delivered with a multi-media approach (web-platform, mobile messages and phone follow-up). Participation in
the intervention will begin in the last trimester of pregnancy and continue until the infant is 12 months old. We
have already pilot-tested the information of this intervention among 10 mother-infant dyads during their first year
of life, with excellent acceptability. We will determine the extent to which the intervention may impact adequate
weight gain, infant activity and nutrition from birth to 12 months of age compared to the control arm. We will also
evaluate the cost of this intervention as a modification of the current WIC curriculum. Such approach has not
been tested before among infants. If successful, this intervention could be adopted as a policy-supported bes...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9956625
- **Project number:** 5U54MD007600-34
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO MED SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** CRISTINA PALACIOS
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $384,054
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1997-09-01 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9956625

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9956625, Intervention to promote physical activation and improve sleep and feeding practices in infants for preventing obesity early in life (The Baby-Act Trial) (5U54MD007600-34). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9956625. Licensed CC0.

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