Overview of 71 European community-based initiatives against childhood obesity starting between 2005 and 2011: general characteristics and reported effects

Abstract

BackgroundCommunity-based initiatives (CBIs) on childhood obesity are considered a good practice approach against childhood obesity. The European Commission called for an overview of CBIs implemented from 2005–2011. A survey was executed by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment of the Netherlands, in collaboration with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the European CBIs, as identified in the survey, presenting their general characteristics, applied strategies (separately for actions targeting the environment and/or directly the children’s behaviour) and the reported effects on weight indicators.MethodsPotentially eligible CBIs were identified by informants in 27 European Union countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, and through desk research. School based approaches could be included if they complied with criteria related to being ‘community-based’. In total, 278 potential eligible CBIs were identified and of these, 260 projects were approached. For 88 an electronic questionnaire was completed; of these 71 met all criteria. The included projects were reported by 15 countries.Results66% of the 71 CBIs implemented actions in more than one setting or throughout the neighbourhood. Most frequently reported environmental actions were professional training (78%), actions for parents (70%), and changing the social (62%) and physical (52%) environment. Most frequently reported educational activities were group education (92%), general educational information (90%), and counselling sessions (58%). The vast majority (96%) implemented both environmental and individual strategies and about half of the CBIs reported a public-private partnership. Eight CBIs provided evidence supporting positive effects on weight indicators and/or overweight prevalence in a general population of children (aged 6 to 12 yrs), and one CBI did not support this. Two of those CBIs were also conducted among adolescents (aged 12 to 16,5 yrs), but showed no effect in this age-group.ConclusionsDespite diversity of included CBIs, common characteristics were the application of integrated actions at a local level, aimed at changing the environment and the children’s behaviour directly. Evidence supporting effectiveness on weight indicators is available, although the design and conduct of most of these studies were suboptimal (i.e. no control group, a small sample size, not random).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-758) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Adipogene Umweltfaktoren

“…Auf Basis von Übersichtsarbeiten (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) haben wir Beispiele zusammengetragen, in denen darüber berichtet wird, dass durch Umweltveränderungen Anreize zu Verhaltensmodifikationen geschaffen wurden, die eine positive Gewichtsentwicklung unterstützen (vgl. [19]) (▶ Tabelle 1).…”

Obesogenic environments: environmental approaches to obesity prevention

“…Searching for "childhood obesity intervention", we selected ten review articles focusing on obesity-related prevention studies (not treatment) in children (35,37,42,(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50). Eight of the selected reviews comprised interventions targeting childhood obesity prevention (encompasing 314 studies meeting the respective inclusion criteria of reviewers in total, not corrected for double-listing), two reviews focused on interventions to improve physical activity (37,50).…”

A stitch in time saves nine? A repeated cross-sectional case study on the implementation of the intersectoral community approach Youth At a Healthy Weight

“…As such, childhood obesity poses a major threat to public health [ 10 ], increases health care expenditures and as a consequence, constitutes an economic burden on society [ 11 ]. Intersectoral community Approaches to address Childhood Obesity (IACO) appear to have great potential to reduce and prevent childhood obesity [ 12 – 17 ]. An IACO aims to target the multiple determinants of childhood obesity by involving various stakeholders from within the community [ 15 , 18 , 19 ].…”

“…Knowledge on these determinants is necessary to develop innovation strategies that have the potential for real change to occur [ 28 , 31 – 35 ]. Only a dozen studies have specifically addressed the innovation process of IACOs [ 17 , 36 ]. Even fewer studies have evaluated these processes longitudinally.…”