Sylvie Naar, Florida State University College of Medicine’s director of the Center for Translational Behavioral Science, is a co-principal investigator on a one-year, $765,000 research grant awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Teaming on the project with colleagues from the University of South Carolina’s School of Medicine Columbia and Wayne State University, they are developing a “Clinical Trial of the Fit Families Multicomponent Obesity Intervention for African American Adolescents and Their Caregivers: Next Step from the ORBIT Initiative.” 

Their study will test Fit Families for Black adolescents with obesity and their primary caregivers in the South. The initial participants in the study are being recruited in South Carolina, but Naar’s goal is to bring the program to North Florida and South Georgia for a multi-site study if the project is successful.

Fit Families, developed in Detroit, Mich., is a multi-component intervention with a unique approach of rewarding youth for weight loss, as well as their caregivers who model weight loss behaviors through physical activity and self-monitoring of dietary intake.