{"doi":"10.1016/j.focus.2025.100465","title":"Leveraging Youth Sports to Deliver a Physical Activity Intervention to Mothers: Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Efficacy of a Single-Arm Open Pilot Trial","abstract":"Introduction Mothers have increased risk for insufficient physical activity (PA) and face various barriers to engaging in PA. Youth sports have been examined as a setting for health promotion interventions for children, but not parents. We conducted a 6-week single-arm open pilot trial of a PA intervention delivered to mothers in Rhode Island, USA during children's sports practices. Methods We partnered with a youth football organization to deliver the intervention which consisted of group PA sessions during practice. Feasibility was determined based on whether enrollment (i.e., ≥8 participants/week), retention (i.e., ≥80% of participants through 6 weeks), and assessment (i.e., obtaining usable PA data from ≥80% of participants) targets were met. Acceptability was determined based on participant responses to a consumer satisfaction questionnaire (with the intervention deemed satisfactory if ≥80% of participants were satisfied with the intervention) and engagement (i.e., intervention session attendance). Preliminary efficacy was determined based on whether participants experienced increases in moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA), assessed via 7-Day PA Recall, or PA self-efficacy, assessed via the Self-Efficacy for PA measure, at 3- and 6-weeks relative to baseline. We descriptively analyzed post-intervention feasibility, acceptability, socio-demographic characteristics, and preliminary efficacy outcomes. To explore preliminary efficacy estimates, we ran a series of unadjusted paired T-tests to compare baseline MVPA and self-efficacy to MVPA and self-efficacy at 3- and 6-weeks. Results We met recruitment (n=26) and retention (85%) targets, but only collected follow-up data from 12 participants (ages 30-62 years). Twelve out of 18 planned intervention sessions were offered due to practice cancellations; participant attendance ranged from 0 to 12 sessions (mean: 3.52, standard deviation: 4.07). All participants (100%) were satisfied with the intervention, and significant increases in MVPA and PA self-efficacy were observed. Specifically, an increase in MVPA from baseline to 3-weeks of 114.5 minutes was observed (Cohen's d: 0.75) while self-efficacy scores increased by 0.98 (Cohen's d: 0.97). Self-efficacy scores were increased by 1.07 (Cohen's d: 0.91) at 6-weeks. Conclusions This study demonstrated the feasibility of delivering a PA intervention to mothers during youth sports practices, though we did not reach our assessment target. Participants were satisfied with the intervention and increases in PA outcomes were observed. However, studies examining strategies to increase engagement and maximize benefits, particularly among insufficiently active mothers, would be beneficial. Nonetheless, this is the first study to demonstrate the potential of youth sports practices as a setting for delivering health promotion interventions to parents.","journal":"AJPM Focus","year":2025,"id":580190,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9424,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1491011,"name":"Belinda O’Hagan","orcid":"0009-0000-8579-1283","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1491012,"name":"Sugandha K. Gupta-Louis","orcid":"0000-0002-9027-0762","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":379147,"name":"Shira Dunsiger","orcid":"0000-0001-5636-0601","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1491445,"name":"Fadilatou Toure","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235714,"name":"Lauren Connell Bohlen","orcid":"0000-0003-4207-9872","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1491013,"name":"Tanya J. Benitez","orcid":"0000-0002-9522-7464","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":779549,"name":"Cara M. Murphy","orcid":"0000-0001-5471-6221","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":727181,"name":"Dominika M. Pindus","orcid":"0000-0001-7288-7921","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1428364,"name":"Candace Brown","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":379151,"name":"Bess H. Marcus","orcid":"0000-0002-9440-924X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":481599,"name":"Tayla von Ash","orcid":"0000-0001-7621-3545","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:58:38.868285Z","pmid":"41783834","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}