For obese children, participating in a weight-loss treatment program with their parents or simply having parents committed to a weight-loss treatment program will yield the same results, a new study suggests.

Children lost the same amount of weight whether they participated in a program with their parents or their parents attended the program on their own, researchers associated with the department of pediatrics and department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego concluded in a study published Tuesday in the the Journal of the American Medical Association

“We included evaluations of parenting and parent behaviors because parents are the most important people in a child’s environment,” the author’s wrote in the paper, titled “Effect of attendance of the child on body weight, energy intake and physical activity in childhood obesity treatment.”

They continued, “In the process of helping their child lose weight, they serve to verbally teach their children the weight control material, model healthy behaviors, and reinforce the acquisition and maintenance of healthy eating and exercise behaviors.”

Between July 2011 and July 2015, 150 overweight and obese 8- to 12-year-old children participated in the study with their parents out of the University of California, San Diego. There were 20 one-hour group meetings with 30-minute individualized behavioral coaching sessions over six months. The researchers noted that the treatments were similar in content with the only difference being the attendance of a child at a session.

“This study provides sound empirical evidence supporting a PBT [parent-based treatment] model for the delivery of childhood obesity treatment. Given the high rates of obesity in children, PBT is a model that could be used to provide treatment to a greater proportion of the population,” the authors concluded.

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