Authors:
José Alberto Benítez-Andrades
1
;
Marta Martínez-Martínez
2
;
Isaías García-Rodríguez
3
;
Carmen Benavides
1
;
Carlos Fernández-San-Juan
2
and
Pilar Marqués-Sánchez
4
Affiliations:
1
SALBIS Research Group, Department of Electric, Systems and Automatics Engineering, University of León, Campus of Vegazana s/n, León, 24071, León, Spain
;
2
University of León, Campus of Vegazana s/n, León, 24071, León, Spain
;
3
SECOMUCI Research Group, Escuela de Ingenierías Industrial e Informática, Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, C.P. 24071 León, Spain
;
4
Faculty Health of Science, SALBIS Research Group, University of León, Spain
Keyword(s):
e-Health, Healthy Habits, Obesity Prevention, Web Application, Web-based Application.
Abstract:
The World Health Organization declared childhood obesity as a global epidemic, stressing the need for urgent action in order to face this serious public-health problem. This paper presents a pilot program based on a technological solution to improve the nutrition and physical activity habits in children. The solution is a multiplatform application that can be accessed both from computers and mobile devices. A study of current, similar solutions was carried out and a web application was designed and built, combining information on healthy nutrition and physical activity habits with the functionalities of an online social network. This application was used to carry out a pilot intervention with children from the first and second years of Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) at a school in Spain. After the pilot program, feedback was received from the users, obtaining valuable information for introducing a number of improvements that will be incorporated into a future program.