Family-centered interventions to reduce maternal and child obesity

Abstract

Obesity is associated with multiple health risks for pregnant and postpartum women and can affect their infants, preschoolers, school-aged children, and adolescents. Familycentered intervention strategies may be an important way to prevent or treat maternal and child obesity. This chapter reviews 19 family-centered interventions designed to address excess body weight among mothers and their children. An additional five interventions were classified as Promising. Six of the studies focused on children age 5 and younger including one study targeting infants; half of these studies were prevention based. Thirteen studies addressed school- aged children; all involved overweight or obese children. Only half of these studies targeted and/or measure parent weight. Results suggest that addressing obesity prevention and treatment from a family perspective could be an effective strategy. Clinicians who care for women of childbearing age should stress the importance of family-centered approaches to develop healthy weight in infants, preschoolers, and children, and when necessary address weight management problems using parents as agents of change both for their children's weight and for their own. Promising new studies offer new prevention strategies for maternal and child obesity prevention approaches.