Motivational Interviewing and Home Visits to Improve Health Behaviors and Reduce Childhood Obesity: A Pilot Study.

Introduction: Childhood obesity prevalence is highest among low-income, Hispanic, and Black children. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of using motivational interviewing (MI) with home visits and the 5-2-1-0 program to improve health behaviors in children. Desirable health behaviors include daily consuming five servings of fruits or vegetables, limiting recreational screen time to 2 hours, exercising for 1 hour, and avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages.

A Brief Stress Diagnostic Tool: The Short Stress Overload Scale.

The Stress Overload Scale (SOS) has demonstrated validity in predicting pathological stress reactions; however, at 30 items, it is lengthy for some clinical applications. Here, two studies tested a 10-item SOS-Short (SOS-S). First, the SOS-S was compared with the SOS in a longitudinal community study ( n = 391), using indices of pathology as criterion measures.