TECH DEMO: Measures Registry, User Guides, and Youth Compendium of Physical Activities: Tools for Childhood Obesity Prevention Research and Evaluation

Introduction: Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in both developed and developing countries. Because of strong biological and sociocultural barriers to weight loss and persistence of youth weight gain into adulthood, prevention of obesity in children is a critical public health goal. Accelerating this area of prevention research depends on wider adoption of high quality metrics and common outcomes. Launched in 2009, the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) is focused on accelerating progress in reducing childhood obesity. This demonstration will present NCCOR resources, including the Measures Registry, and two new resources released in 2017, the Measures Registry User Guides, and Youth Compendium of Physical Activities (http://www.nccor.org/nccor-tools/).

Methods: The Measures Registry and User Guides were designed to help obesity prevention researchers understand and select high quality measures of diet, physical activity, as well as the food and physical activity environments. Note the registry currently focuses on built, commercial and transportation environments rather than social determinants of health. Registry entries (1200+ measures in four domains) include detailed information on the measure and its validity. In response to user feedback, NCCOR has now developed and released four monograph length User Guides along with accompanying webinars and case studies of measures selection. The Youth Compendium was developed to improve conversion of reported activities into units of energy expenditure. It is based on systematic review of published literature, pooling of unpublished data, and a special Journal issue.

Results: These resources contribute to better measurement and to the availability of comparable data for research and evaluation related to childhood obesity. The Measures Registry received ~24,000 hits from ~1200 unique visitors in the first 6 months of 2017 and the Guides received 8000 page views from 3633 unique viewers. The Youth Compendium provides a list of 196 common activities in which youth participate and the estimated energy cost associated with each activity. This updated compendium, unlike past compendia, is based entirely on values measured in children and accounts for the age dependence of resting metabolic rate in youth. Website usage for the recently released compendium, will also be provided.

Conclusions: Together, these resources are designed to foster validity and comparability of research and evaluation projects addressing childhood obesity by promoting selection of best available measures and improving capacity to translate studies of physical activities into common units of energy expenditure.