Effectiveness of a family-, school- and community-based intervention on physical activity and its correlates in Belgian families with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus: the Feel4Diabetes-study

Background: The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the European Feel4Diabetes intervention, promoting a healthy lifestyle, on physical activity and its correlates among families at risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (based on the Finnish Diabetes Risk Score) in Belgium.

Methods: The Feel4Diabetes intervention involved three components: family, school and community component, with the family component consisting of 6 counseling sessions for families at risk. Main outcomes were objectively measured physical activity levels and its subjectively measured correlates. The final sample consisted of 454 parents (mean age 39.4 years; 72.0% women) and 444 children (mean age 8.0 years; 50.1% girls). Multilevel repeated measures analyses were performed to assess intervention effectiveness after 1 year.

Results: In parents, there was no significant intervention effect. In children, there were only significant negative effects for moderate to vigorous physical activity (p = 0.05; η_p² = 0.008) and steps (p = 0.03; η_p² = 0.006%) on weekdays, with physical activity decreasing (more) in the intervention group.

Conclusions: The F4D-intervention lacks effectiveness on high-risk families' physical activity and its correlates in Belgium. This could partially be explained by low attendance rates and a large drop-out. To reach vulnerable populations, future interventions should invest in more appropriate recruitment (e.g. more face-to-face contact) and more bottom-up development of the intervention (i.e. co-creation of the intervention with the target group).

Trial registration: The Feel4Diabetes-study was prospectively registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02393872 on 20 March 2015.