Systematic Review of Child Obesity Prevention and Treatment Trials Addressing Parenting

Abstract

A systematic review was conducted to determine whether child obesity/overweight treatment and prevention trials that address parenting result in significant changes or differences in child BMIz, BMI percentile, weight status, or related outcomes. On May 14, 2015 Pubmed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched with the following search strategy “parenting OR parent OR mother OR father AND intervention OR RCT OR trial AND parenting style OR feeding style OR responsive feeding OR restrictive feeding AND child obesity OR child overweight OR child weight status OR child waist circumference OR child BMI OR child BMI percentile OR child BMI% or child BMI z OR child BMI centile OR child BMIZ or child BMI‐z,” yielding 244 unique articles. Abstract and title screening (α = .90) excluded all protocols as well as completed studies restricted to adolescents. Full text review resulted in 16 studies that included some aspect of parenting in the trial and also provided weight outcomes for children. Study sample was obese and/or overweight children in 12 studies; the remaining four included children from the full range of weight statuses. Ten of 16 studies reported a significant effect of intervention on child BMIz, BMI percentile, or other weight outcome. All 10 studies with significant effects were focused on intervention and treatment of obese/overweight children rather than on obesity prevention. Only two of the 10 were focused solely on children ages 5 and under. Results suggest obesity intervention trials that address parenting styles and similar constructs have been successful, particularly for older children. Additional efforts to increase the success of interventions for the toddler and preschool periods are needed.Support or Funding InformationUSDA/NIFA Hatch/Multistate and Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station OKLO2849; Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station OKLO2868