School‐Based Obesity Prevention: Research, Challenges, and Recommendations

Abstract

Childhood overweight is one of the most serious problems currently affecting individual and public health. Schools represent a logical site for prevention because children spend 6-8 hours a day there during most of the year. Although reports of school-based overweight or obesity prevention programs exist, there are no summaries specifying which interventions are effective in preventing weight gain in the school environment. Researchers generally consider randomized controlled trials to be the most reliable and valid findings; so, naturally they are the best for providing evidence on which to base curriculum and policy guidelines. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of school-based randomized controlled studies intended to prevent increases in schoolchildren's body weight or body mass index. This paper addresses the successes and other positive health outcomes, as well as the limitations of the school-based research. The goal of this paper is to assist school health administrators with curriculum decisions related to overweight or obesity prevention in schools. Following the critique, the challenges of childhood overweight or obesity prevention are discussed, and recommendations for further research, school activities, and policy changes are made.

Strategies for the prevention and control of obesity in the school setting: systematic review and meta-analysis

“…19 Several systematic reviews of childhood obesity programs have been published. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] With the exception of one recent review 20 and an earlier review conducted by our team in collaboration with the Community Guide Branch of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 25 this work is unique in that it focuses specifically on studies undertaken in schools. Previous reviews have focused solely on the prevention of obesity 22 or weight loss interventions among already overweight children.…”

New Perspectives on Health Disparities and Obesity Interventions in Youth

“…Identifying effective intervention strategies is important, given that a recent metaanalysis (Stice et al, 2006) showed that the majority of the programs, among all ethnic groups including Caucasians, did not produce statistically reliable weight gain prevention effects. Stice et al (2006) argued that it is imperative to focus on the elements of programs that produced significant weight gain prevention effects, and additional reviews have been conducted to help identify aspects of successful childhood programs that target obesity-related behaviors such as diet, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors (e.g., Budd & Volpe, 2006;Doak et al, 2006). These reviews suggest that family-based interventions that incorporate education and behavior modification have been successful, and propose that best practice for changing obesity-related behaviors is an intervention that includes improving both physical activity and diet.…”

School-Based Interventions for Health Promotion and Weight Control: Not Just Waiting on the World to Change

“…Several systematic reviews of childhood obesity programs have been published (7,19,23,24,27,32,33,43,50,65,77,103,107,110,111,121). With the exception of one recent review (24) and an earlier review conducted by the author's lab in collaboration with the CDC's Community Guide Branch (65), these studies do not focus specifically on schools.…”