Kurbo is a
digital therapeutics Digital therapeutics, a subset of digital health, are evidence-based therapeutic interventions driven by high quality software programs to prevent, manage, or treat a medical disorder or disease. Digital therapeutic companies should publish trial re ...
program focused on sustainable healthy eating for children and teenagers. The program tracks and manages nutrition, exercise and weight of
adolescents. It operates through a mobile application and a website, providing
health coaching Health coaching is the use of evidence-based skillful conversation, clinical interventions and strategies to actively and safely engage client/patients in health behavior change. Health coaches are certified or credentialed to safely guide clients a ...
from weight loss and
behavior change professionals to tackle childhood obesity.
Kurbo was acquired by
WW International (formerly Weight Watchers) in August 2019 and continues to operate as a subsidiary of WW.
History
Kurbo was founded in July 2013 in
Palo Alto, California by Joanna Strober, Mark Vershel and Thea Runyan. Strober had a teenage son who struggled with his weight. Unable to find a suitable weight loss program for children and teenagers, she collaborated with Runyan, who was a coach at the Pediatric Weight Control Program at Stanford Children’s Hospital, and Vershel to build a health and weight management program for adolescents. The program is based on research on pediatric weight control and is licensed from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital pediatric obesity program. It is known for its traffic light food classification system and portion sizing design.
Functionality
Kurbo is designed to teach children how to manage their eating habits in an educational manner. It provides a single set of
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
s for the mobile application and online program to track and access activity data of the users. It is accompanied by interaction with a health and behavioral coach who provide personalized suggestions, feedback and encouragement to the users.
Studies and feedback
A pilot program in 2014 demonstrated that Kurbo improved engagement and helped children reduce their
BMI percentile. The
Journal of Medical Internet Research published a study in 2019 on ''Impact of a Mobile App-Based Health Coaching and Behavior Change Program on Participant Engagement and Weight Status of Overweight and Obese Children''. This study analyzed the effectiveness of Kurbo’s program and inferred that increased coaching sessions led to increased BMI reduction.
A
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
article by dietician Christy Harrison and a statement by the
National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) opposed the use of the app raising concern over children’s diet and psychological implications.
References
External links
*{{Official website, https://kurbo.com/
Health software
2013 establishments in the United States
Companies based in Palo Alto, California