Grant: Team Grant: Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) - China

The epidemics of obesity and metabolic syndrome related disorders are a major public health concern. Increasing evidence points to the role of early life adverse factors in the developmental origins of the vulnerability to such metabolic disorders. Reducing the risk of overweight and obesity (OWO) from early life stages will produce substantial benefits to decrease population burdens of metabolic diseases. However, current intervention measures remain insufficient to halt the increasing OWO epidemics. Building on our strengths in large birth cohort studies, clinical trials and studies on developmental programming of metabolic disorders, our transdisciplinary Sino-Canadian team will conduct a community-based multi-centre cluster-randomized controlled trial to test the effect of an evidence-based and multi-faceted early life-course community-family-mother-child interventions package incorporated into the routine pre-conception, prenatal and child care systems on childhood OWO rates in 1-6 years old children in China. A total of 48 community health centers linked to 3 distinct regional large obstetric care hospitals will be randomized into the intervention or control (routine care) group. We will explore the mechanisms (microbiome, epigenetics, micro RNAs) that may underline the development of OWO, and the impacts of the intervention. The research program will for the first time evaluate an integrated intervention package from pre-conception and early pregnancy into childhood on OWO rates. The findings will produce a scalable community-based intervention package that may be recommended for implementation at regional and national-level to reduce the risk of OWO and metabolic syndrome related disorders in China.