{"doi":"10.3390/children11091097","title":"Preliminary Effectiveness of a One-Week Summer Day Camp for Improving Children’s Health Behaviors and Psychosocial Well-Being Outcomes","abstract":"Purpose: Summer day camp offers children opportunities to grow knowledge and skills, be physically active, and have fun. Compared to healthy children, at-risk children (i.e., overweight, or with obesity and chronic health conditions) typically display less optimal health behaviors and psychosocial well-being, especially during summer months. This study examined the preliminary effectiveness of an American-Diabetes-Association-sponsored summer day camp at improving children’s health behaviors (i.e., physical activity, screen time, diet, sleep) and psychosocial well-being outcomes (i.e., quality of life [QoL], enjoyment, weight-related self-efficacy). Method: The sample consisted of 39 participants, including 19 boys and 20 girls, with majority being overweight (n = 4 or 10%) or with obesity (n = 26 or 67%), who attended the day camp for one week. Results: Significant improvements were observed in screen time, quality of life, and physical function. The results further showed significant time by gender interaction effect for overall QoL (p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.15), physical health (a dimension of QoL; p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.18), and significant time by household income for the psychosocial health (another dimension of QoL), favoring boys and those from higher income families. Discussion: The findings indicate a positive preliminary effectiveness of the summer camp at reducing children’s screen time and improving their QoL, especially in boys and those from higher-income families. Future research should focus on health disparities and expansion of this camp for the potential of longer-term and more robust effects related to wellness, nutrition literacy, physical activity promotion, and obesity prevention.","journal":"Children","year":2024,"id":471848,"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":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.949,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1248389,"name":"Yuxin Nie","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1307003,"name":"Paul Son","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1306592,"name":"Renee A. Underwood","orcid":"0000-0003-1405-8775","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1307004,"name":"Peyton Murray","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1307005,"name":"Callie Hebert","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1306593,"name":"K-Lynn McKey","orcid":"0009-0005-3448-0596","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":716487,"name":"Chelsea Hendrick","orcid":"0000-0002-6734-5754","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":376217,"name":"Amanda E. Staiano","orcid":"0000-0001-7846-046X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":520387,"name":"Senlin Chen","orcid":"0000-0003-0945-4271","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1306591,"name":"Q. Tan","orcid":"0000-0003-2012-1603","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":34,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:05:48.788780Z","pmid":"39334629","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":[]}