Individual research recommendation details

Recommendation ID

PH47/4

Question

Recommendation 4 Weight management programmes. Who should take action? Research councils, commissioners and funders. Researchers and investigators.

Any explanatory notes
(if applicable)

What action should they take?
- Consider which components of multi-component interventions determine effectiveness and cost effectiveness.
- Investigate effective and cost effective approaches to lifestyle weight management for children younger than 6 years.
- Investigate effective and cost effective approaches to lifestyle weight management for children and young people with special needs. How can their needs, and the needs of their families, best be met? What training would staff need to deliver such interventions?
- Determine the long-term effectiveness of programmes. Do children and young people who have lost or maintained their weight in a lifestyle weight management programme maintain this in the long term and, if so, for how long? What programme characteristics facilitate longer term effectiveness?
- Examine how best to communicate the individual measures of the National Child Measurement Programme to parents and carers to ensure they take action, as needed, without causing distress.
- Investigate how to encourage parents and carers to take responsibility for their child's weight
management. This includes how best to help parents, carers and families recognise when children and young people are overweight or obese. It also includes how to encourage parents and carers to participate in programmes.
- Investigate what impact parents and carers have on the outcomes of programmes.
- Examine who is best placed to deliver lifestyle weight management programmes (including
lay people) for children and young people and what their training needs are.
- Investigate effective and appropriate ways of getting children and young people involved in lifestyle weight management programmes. This might include use of new technology such as texting or phone apps.
- Investigate and develop a comorbidity assessment tool for use by lifestyle weight management services, to ensure that, if necessary, children and young people are referred for specialist support.

Source guidance details

Comes from guidance

Weight management: lifestyle services for overweight or obese children and young people

Number

PH47

Date issued

October 2013

Other details