Interventions to Prevent and Treat Childhood Obesity: A Systematic Review

Overweight and obesity are chronic conditions, and over the last decade many groups of people have been affected by these problems. Both developed countries, including the United States, Canada, and Europe, and underdeveloped areas, including parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia have seen drastic and continual increases in obesity and overweight, and in many places they now have reached epidemic proportions. This epidemic has affects all ages, almost all ethnic groups, and people of every socioeconomic status, though often in disproportionate ways. This paper reviews the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the U.S., discusses adverse health and psychosocial outcomes, and reviews the effectiveness of various interventions in preventing and treating childhood overweight and/or obesity. A previous systematic review conducted on this topic by Summerbell et al in 2003 concluded that there is limited data on the effectiveness of obesity prevention and treatment programs and no generalizable conclusions can be drawn from the studies to date. Thus, a new review examining this topic is needed for several reasons. One, the Summerbell et al. review was last updated in January of 2002. Also, the Summerbell et al review included all children from age 0 to 18 years, which is a very wide age range. In this review, I have narrowed the age range to 6 to 12 years to include only elementary school aged children because I feel that children are easier to reach at this age for the following reasons: 1) they all are required by law to go to school, and 2) younger children are often more accepting of change than teenagers. However, the most important reason for doing another systematic review is that childhood overweight/obesity is huge problem and we need to find an answer to this question.Master of Public Healt