Positive parent-child attachment can be determined by opportunities for the child to interact with his/her parent and can influence a child's physical activity (PA) behavior. Therefore, an intervention that provides children and their parent more time to interact positively could impact children's PA. We examined the efficacy of a 12-week mother-daughter intervention on African-American girls' PA levels. In Spring of 2013 and 2014, mother-daughter dyads (n = 76) from Springfield, MA, were randomly assigned to one of three groups (child-mother (CH-M, n = 28), child alone (CH, n = 25), or control (CON, n = 23)) that participated in an afterschool culturally-tailored dance intervention (60 min/day, 3 days/week, 12 weeks). Girls in the CH-M group participated in the intervention with their maternal figure, while girls in the CH group participated in the intervention alone. CON group participants received weekly health-related newsletters. PA was assessed with accelerometers for seven days at baseline, 6-weeks, and 12-weeks. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine rates of change in PA. During the afterschool intervention time, girls in the CH-M group displayed a significantly steeper rate of increase in their percent time spent in vigorous PA compared to both the CON (gamma 0.80, p < 0.001) and the CH group (Chi2[1] = 13.01, p < 0.001). Mothers in the CH-M group displayed a significantly steeper rate of increase in their percent time spent in total daily moderate-to-vigorous PA compared to CH group's mothers (gamma 0.07, p = 0.01). This culturally-tailored mother-daughter afterschool intervention influenced African-American girls' afterschool hour PA levels, but not total daily PA. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Study is registered at www.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01588379.

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