Larissa Niec

If there’s just one thing you can do for a child: Improving the parent-child relationship to reduce negative health outcomes

The rising incidence of childhood obesity has been described as a “pandemic of the twenty-first century” (Malecka-Tendera & Mazur, 2006). In the United States and many countries in Europe, rates of obesity in children have climbed drastically over the past several decades. Currently, 1 in 5 children in the US and as many as 1 in 5 children in Europe meet medical definitions of obesity (www.cdc.gov; World Health Organization, 2018), with Cyprus, Spain, Italy, and Germany having the highest prevalence. Negative health outcomes associated with childhood obesity include for example Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. In addition to risks for negative physical outcomes, childhood obesity is associated with increased occurrence of emotional issues such as anxiety and depression. The treatment of childhood obesity has proved challenging, and few prevention interventions have demonstrated success. Recent research, however, supports a conceptualization of childhood obesity risk that includes the quality of the parent-child relationship. That is, through the parent-child relationship, children develop their capacity for self-regulation, learn healthy or less healthy eating patterns, and are protected from or exposed to other obesity-risk related behavior (e.g., excessive screen media use). Thus, to have a significant impact on children’s health-related behaviors associated with obesity, it is important to directly address the quality of the parent-child relationship and the effectiveness of parenting. The PATCH Program (Parents Active in Their Children’s Health) is a novel prevention intervention that builds the parent-child relationship in the context of health-related behaviors such as parents’ feeding strategies (i.e., mealtimes) and management of children’s screen media use. This presentation will review the theoretical and empirical links between the parent-child relationship and child obesity risk, describe the components of the PATCH Program, and illustrate the implementation of the program with case examples.

CV

Dr. Larissa N. Niec is a Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Center for Children, Families, and Communities at Central Michigan University. She has conducted research and training on the treatment of the parent-child relationship for over 20 years. The overarching goal of her research program is to improve health equity for underserved families by increasing access to effective parent-child interventions. She addresses this goal with three primary branches of funded research: (1) development and evaluation of innovations in intervention delivery (e.g., Niec et al., 2020; Niec et al., 2016); (2) identification of barriers to and facilitators of effective therapist training (e.g., Niec et al., 2018); and (3) exploration of key mechanisms of change (e.g., Barnett, Niec, & Acevedo, 2013). Dr. Niec is one of 21 Master Trainers in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) who have been certified by PCIT International to disseminate the evidence-based intervention globally. She has conducted PCIT trainings throughout the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe. Her work to help parents manage their young children’s problematic screen use was recently highlighted in a segment of the NBC Today show. Her book, Handbook of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: Innovations and Applications for Research and Practice, reviews the state-of-the-science of PCIT and its many adaptations.