A home-based program that combines a doctor’s advice with computer assessment, mailings and phone calls may help teens become more active and improve their diet, a study hints.

Many adolescents fail to meet national guidelines for participation in regular moderate or vigorous physical activity or dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, fiber, or total dietary fat.

In a randomized, controlled study, Dr. Kevin Patrick, of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues assessed a home healthcare-based intervention to improve levels of physical activity and nutrition behaviors in adolescents between the ages of 11 and 15 years.

They randomly allocated 878 adolescents to a control group or to the intervention, which consisted of primary care, office-based, computer-assisted diet, physical activity assessment, and goal setting, followed by 1 year of mail and telephone counseling.

Adolescents in the home-care intervention group significantly reduced their sedentary behaviors compared with those in the control group. This was seen in both boys and girls.

Boys reported more active days per week, and girls reported having more servings of fruits and vegetables than boys, although the difference was not significant.

“More girls in the (intervention) group compared with the control group met the guideline for maximum percentage of daily calories from saturated fat at 12 months,” Patrick and colleagues write. More boys in the intervention group, compared with the control group, met the physical activity guides at 1-year follow-up.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, February 2006.