Barriers in Nursing Interventions and Health Promotion in Childhood Obesity

Introduction: Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic worldwide; Mexico and the United States are the countries that occupy the first two places with childhood obesity. In addition, it is an important risk factor for developing cardio-metabolic diseases and even many types of cancer; 1, therefore, health promotion at a first level of care is necessary to avoid comorbidities.2 Objective: To determine the main barriers when health promotion is carried out, especially by nurses to approach the problem of childhood obesity. Methodology: A literature review was carried out starting in 2004 using key words (childhood obesity, nursing interventions and barriers in health promotion) in the Scielo, Dialnet and Google Scholar databases. More than 1000 results were found, which finally applying the inclusion criteria (clinical trials, intervention studies, reviews, and meta-analysis; articles with children under 19 years old and their parents; articles where the effect of nursing or health promotion interventions is mentioned) and exclusion (articles about childhood obesity but without health promotion) 22 articles were obtained. Results: It was found that the main barriers in terms of health promotion related to nursing were the willingness, openness, and acceptance of the parents.3,4 It was noted in most studies that if the parents showed little interest in changing the child's habits or lifestyle or were not consistent with the therapy, the children were less likely to comply with the treatment.5,6 Additionally, parents were less likely to participate in a weight loss intervention with their child if they themselves did not believe their child was obese. Likewise, education and on-the-job training on structured interventions to approach overweight and obesity are vitals in nursing; as well as skills training in a sensible and effective way to address challenging conversations with children, young people, and their families.7, 8 Conclusion: The most important factor for a successful intervention is getting parents quickly involved in the intervention with the child and educating parents about the condition to further encourage parent involvement during treatment. In the studies reviewed, when parents participate in weight loss with the child, children are more successful in losing excess body weight and staying healthy. References: UNICEF. Obesidad infantil. [online]. 2022 Available from: https://www.unicef.org/mexico/temas/obesidad-infantil. Smith JD, Fu E, Kobayashi MA. Prevention and Management of Childhood Obesity and Its Psychological and Health Comorbidities. Annu Rev Clin Psychol. 2020; 16:351-378. Golan M & Crow SJ. Targeting Parents Exclusively in the Treatment Childhood Obesity: Long-Term Results. Obesity Research. 2004; 12(2): 357–361. Bennett B, Sothern MS, Bennett B & Sothern MS. Diet, exercise, behavior: the promise and limits of lifestyle change. Seminars in Pediatric Surgery, 2009; 18(3): 152-158. Lewis K & Greenwood N. Opportunistic health promotion among overweight children. In: RCN Publishing, 2015. Tanda R, Beverly EA & Hughes K. Factors associated with Ohio nurse practitioners' childhood obesity preventive practice patterns. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 2017; 29(12): 763-772. Johns R, Brimble MJ. Barriers to health promotion with overweight or obese children, young people and their families. Nurs Child Young People. 2022; 34(6):29-35. Elizondo‐Montemayor L, Norma Georgina Gutiérrez, Moreno D, Ubaldo Martínez, Tamargo D & Velia M. School-based individualised lifestyle intervention decreases obesity and the metabolic syndrome in Mexican children. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 2013; 26(s1): 82–89. None of the authors have a conflict of interest. Institution: Escuela de Enfermería Angelópolis. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.