Pediatric Obesity Treatment via Telehealth: Current Evidence and Future Directions.

Abstract

Telehealth delivery of pediatric weight management interventions may address time, travel, and cost barriers to in-person interventions, thus improving accessibility. This narrative review highlights findings from the past 5 years of pediatric lifestyle interventions for weight management that utilize telehealth for treatment delivery. We describe impressions and future directions. We identified and included 20 studies that described unique interventions from the past 5 years. The majority of reviewed studies indicated statistically significant reductions in BMI z-scores, high retention and attendance, and high satisfaction. However, mean decreases in BMI z-scores were marginal (approximately 0.10) in all but two studies. Studies did not often report effect sizes. Pediatric telehealth weight management interventions demonstrate good feasibility and acceptability. Improvement in reporting results and more rigorous research, including use of randomized designs, recruitment of larger samples, and incorporation of extended follow-up is needed to determine clinical impact and magnitude of effects.