Journal Article

Learning More from What We Already Know About Childhood Obesity Prevention

Kumanyika, Shiriki K.

2020

Overview

[...]the Institute of Medicine Committee on Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention reviewed >800 reports to identify policy, systems, and environmental change strategies most well supported by evidence.2 There have been some signs of progress among the youngest children.3,4 However, progress is not yet stable or visible in the national trend data, and even where observed in states or localities, progress has not been translated into clearly scalable approaches.5 Moreover, there is well-founded concern about a lack of progress in reducing obesity prevalence in racial/ethnic minority populations and in low-resource settings where disparities vis a vis reference populations are observed.6 Taken together, the lack of evidence of progress overall and especially with respect to health disparities has led to calls for new approaches.1,7–9 The Childhood Obesity Evidence Base (COEB) project, described in this supplement, is a novel approach for deriving new insights from existing evidence. Results for each taxonomic component were tabulated according to frequency of occurrence and associated with one or more levels of intervention according to a socioecological model, that is, individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and societal level.15 Thus, the project has so far contributed to the evidence base on early childhood obesity prevention interventions in three ways: (1) results of a scoping review of studies conducted with 2- to 5-year-old children during the past 15 years, (2) a database of these studies coded according to an empirically derived classification of key study variables (i.e., not limited to categories based on existing theory), and (3) an example of one way to use the database in meta-analysis. Increased awareness of the need for more deliberate focus on translation and implementation in the obesity prevention field is motivated by an interest in improving intervention outcomes related to prevention of excess weight gain or achieving initial or sustained weight control. Because health disparities and health equity-oriented research emphasize understanding of and adapting to context, implementation research is viewed as especially relevant to such research in both health care delivery and community settings.18,19 The contexts to be addressed through research translation differ from those in controlled research settings.

• Publisher: SAGE Publications,Mary Ann Liebert, Inc
• Subject: Age / Caregivers / Classification / Ethnicity / Health disparities / Hypotheses / Intervention / Meta-analysis / Minority & ethnic groups / Obesity / Prevention / Race / Socioeconomic factors / Taxonomy / Weight control