Endocrine Abstracts

Multidisciplinary weight management interventions are recommended for children with obesity due to its complex nature. However, there is wide variation between different multidisciplinary interventions in terms of healthcare professionals involved and their mode of delivery. It is important to explore what the main components are in these multidisciplinary interventions and the theories underpinning them to understand how they work. Similarly, it is important to explore what outcome measures are collected and if the interventions are effective at improving these outcomes. Previous systematic reviews have often limited the focus to one or two outcomes, exclude children with comorbidities or do not comment on underpinning theory.

Methods: Systematic searches of electronic databases (Embase, Medline, Ovid, Web of Science, Psycinfo and Cinahl) were conducted. Studies that evaluated a multidisciplinary intervention (delivered by a minimum of 2 healthcare professionals) for children with obesity were included.

Results: One hundred and sixteen studies were included. The studies included over 34,000 participants and were conducted in 27 countries (4 in UK). Intervention length ranged from 2 months to 36 months. Only 28 out of 116 studies were underpinned by theory and cognitive behavioural theory was most used. The average number of healthcare professionals involved was 4 yet only 55 of out 116 interventions included a psychology professional. Furthermore, only 17 studies measured any psychological outcomes (such as quality of life). The most common primary outcome was body mass index (BMI) which was used in 80 out of 116 studies (69%) and significant changes to BMI were found in 64 studies (80 %).

Conclusion: Of the large number of multidisciplinary weight management interventions that have been conducted, most (69%) focus on BMI as the primary outcome and only 14% included psychosocial measures despite 47% including a psychology professional as part of the intervention. Future interventions should aim to include more psychosocial measures as the primary outcome.