The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused a lot of change for all of us. For Dr. Columna, that meant figuring out how to transition his Fit Families program online so that he may continue to serve the 23 families participating in the study, and making sure that his participants were able to stay active and engaged in times when activity may be more important than ever. The transition, while stressful, has lead to some real innovation in the way researchers communicate with participants, and has provided some lessons for how to expand the program in the future.
“When COVID hit, parents told us during the interviews they don’t know what they would have done without the program, because the program became the PE curriculum for the entire family,” Columna said. “I always knew that I wanted to do this all over the world, but what COVID did is push us to do it sooner.”