Ethical issues in obesity prevention for school children: a systematic qualitative review

Abstract

Objectives: Planning and conducting preventive measures against obesity for school children is beset with ethical issues which should be known to make well-informed decisions. The goal of this study was to provide a comprehensive spectrum of these ethical issues by means of a systematic review. In this context, the study also assesses the value of different search strategies for ethical literature in public health. Methods: Literature was searched in Medline, EBSCO and others. Three different search strategies with varied scopes were applied and their output was compared. Qualitative content analysis was used for extracting and categorizing ethical issues. Results: 109 publications (published from 1995 to 2015) were finally included. The qualitative analysis resulted in 60 potentially relevant ethical issues. The three search strategies showed substantial differences regarding their search results. Conclusions: The presented spectrum provides an initial evidence base for dealing with ethical issues adequately. The findings of the study further suggest that a broader scope is more fruitful for systematic reviews on ethical issues in the field of public health.