Health Benefits From Obesity Interventions

Yes, it is true. There ARE health benefits involved with obesity interventions. Haby et al do a wonderful job with their research and even use a cost-effective project in order to find out the health benefits for 13 obesity prevention interventions. Obesity is becoming a problem all over the world and Australia is no different. A project to assess selected obesity prevention interventions was implemented to not only assist the state and national policy-makers but prove to them that these programs are effective AND cost-effective. The introduction goes into detail about previous ACE projects (Assessing Cost Effectiveness). However, this was the first project that was focusing on children and adolescents and they had to change it up a bit to accommodate the younger age range. Their purpose was plain and simple: not only did they want to show off the ACE-Obesity approach but they wanted to demonstrate and provide the actual health benefit results for the many intervention programs.

The methods are very detailed, giving an overview of the aims and process that the ACE-Obesity program went through. In detail, they discuss the many potential interventions and how it was reduced to a "mere" 13 programs. The criteria makes sense as you want the programs to be relevant to what you are doing and you certainly want your evidence to support the analyses at the end of the day. They discuss how BMI was calculated based on the data they gathered and also how they figured out what made something "effective". I feel they delved too much into the energy imbalance factor as I did not find it that relevant to everything else going on. It just felt like a whole new factor was being added into the process.

Table 1 gives the reader a real feel to what was going on with the 13 programs along with details on the participants and a bunch of comments and sidenotes. Very helpful for the visual learner. They do discuss the "economic analyses" aspect even though they do not show us anything in table format. It is not surprise to me that a factor such as "reducing tv advertising..." is so detrimental and influential to viewers. We all fall for the commercials that make our mouths water. The discussion section goes into great length about the limitations that were faced and one must remember this is happening all the way in Australia. As they discuss, some programs might work differently in other countries and you really cannot generalize what happens in one place for the rest of the world (this is not the World Cup ya know).

As Haby et al say at the end, valuable information IS provided and their research proves it. This is the type of thing that should be spread throughout the world as different interventions can work for different people. The prevention of obesity in youngsters IS possible and doable and can even be cost-effective if done properly.