Matthew Haemer
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Childhood obesity is far more common among Hispanic children from low-income families, yet the programs designed to treat it have largely left these families out. Spanish-speaking households in particular have been underrepresented in research, and the treatments that exist have not been shown to work for them.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Social Science
- Topics
childhood obesity
pediatric obesity
body mass index
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Compare BMI reduction between the family-inclusive Healthy Living Program and a recommended primary care counseling control in low-income Hispanic children with obesity across three age groups, 2-6, 7-12 and 13-16 years, in a randomized controlled trial.
- Measure secondary outcomes of cardiometabolic laboratory tests, fitness, quality of life, eating behaviors and food security in children receiving the family-inclusive program versus primary care counseling.
- Test obesity prevention by comparing BMI trajectories of non-obese 2-11 year old children with above-median BMI whose siblings are enrolled in the family-inclusive program versus the control condition.
- Evaluate implementation of both programs within the RE-AIM framework, assessing reach, adoption, fidelity, replication costs, cost per unit of BMI change, and maintenance in primary care clinic and recreation center settings.
More about the research
This randomized controlled trial tests a weight management program built specifically with and for these families, asking whether it reduces body mass index in children with obesity and whether it also keeps their siblings from gaining excess weight.
Why it matters
Low-income Hispanic children, including those in Spanish-speaking households, carry a disproportionate share of childhood obesity but have had little access to treatment shown to work for them. If this family-inclusive program lowers BMI and improves cardiometabolic measures, fitness and food security, it could give safety-net clinics and community organizations a delivery model that is affordable, culturally and linguistically matched, and close to where families live, with cost data to support wider adoption.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jaime Peterson
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether Kinder Coaching, a parent coaching program delivered by community health workers, improves preschoolers' school readiness on the Brigance III screen compared with a provider-reviewed checklist, in a randomized trial of 240 Medicaid families in Oregon.
Danielle Jake-Schoffman
University of Florida, FL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine the FamilyCollab smartwatch app, which supports parent-child goal setting, shared real-time exercise and reflection, through two rounds of usability studies with 12 parent-child pairs.
Brenda Salley
University of Kansas, KS·Psychology
Test whether Talk With Me Baby, language coaching delivered during well-child visits, improves the home language environment and child language by age 2, using a 16-clinic randomized trial with 400 families, LENA recordings, home videos, and standardized tests.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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