Interventions aimed at preventing and reducing overweight/obesity among children and adolescents: a meta-synthesis

The prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity has been a major worldwide problem for decades. To stop the number of children and adolescents with overweight or obesity from increasing, numerous interventions focusing on improving children’s weight status have been designed and implemented. This vastly growing body of research on weight-related interventions for children and adolescents has been summarized by several meta-analyses that aim to provide an overview of the effectiveness of these interventions. Yet, the number of meta-analyses is expanding so quickly and overall results differ, making a comprehensive synopsis of the literature difficult. To tackle this problem, a meta- synthesis was conducted to draw informed conclusions about the state of the effectiveness of interventions targeting child and adolescent overweight. The results of the quantitative synthesis of 26 meta-analyses resulted in a standardized mean difference of -0.12 (95%CI: -0.16;-0.08). Several moderator analyses (e.g., gender, age, duration of the intervention, parental involvement) showed that participant and intervention characteristics had little impact on the overall effect size. Overall, the results of this meta-synthesis suggest that interventions result in statistically significant effects albeit of relatively little clinical relevance.