No abstract

Historically, primary health care services for women have been vastly inadequate. It was not until 1990, when the National Institutes of Health established the Office of Research on Women's Health, that the United States began to acknowledge the importance of providing primary care services to women. Even today, women continue to be a greatly underserved population when it comes to primary health care services. Midwives are ideal providers of health promotion services for women because their entire philosophy of care centers on the promotion of women's health throughout the lifecycle.

A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify the barriers that prevent practitioners from identifying and counseling parents and caregivers of overweight or obese children. Once identified, barriers were organized into thematic categories (parental, provider, and professional barriers) and recommendations were generated to facilitate discussion about childhood obesity between professionals and parents. Childhood obesity is a significant public health problem. Healthcare providers must be able to effectively communicate with caregivers and put childhood obesity at the front of healthcare discussions. This article provides a synthesis of the relevant literature and makes recommendations for healthcare providers to overcome the barriers allowing healthier outcomes for children.