Effectiveness of school intervention programs to reduce childhood obesity

Abstract

The prevalence of obesity has been increasing rapidly throughout the world, becoming one of the most challenging public health concerns of the 21st century. The school is one of the most favorable places when it comes to guiding the child's behavior through healthy lifestyles, due to the large number of hours that students remain in it and the number of years of their academic training. The objective was to determine what type of school intervention has the greatest benefits in reducing obesity rates in schoolchildren between 6 and 12 years of age. Articles published between 2014 and 2020 in the following databases were reviewed: Sciencedirect, Scielo and Pubmed, using the recommendations of the PRISMA guide. 656 articles were counted, after the elimination of abstract reading (615), full text reading (41) where only 6 met the inclusion criteria. It is concluded that the multimodal intervention programs analyzed, mainly where physical activity and eating habits were included, are the most effective for reducing obesity in children between 6 and 12 years of age.