History matters: childhood weight trajectories as a basis for planning community-based obesity prevention to adolescents
Author Interview: Joakim Ekberg MSc
Department of Medical and Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Linköping University
SE-581 83 Linköping Sweden
What are the main findings of the study?
Using projections from epidemiological data and regional practice, we
found that by basing the selection of adolescents for obesity
prevention on weight trajectories, the load on highly specialized
paediatric care can be reduced by one–third and total health service
costs for obesity management among adolescents reduced by one–third.
However, this was a hypothetical comparison and before used in
policies and prevention program planning, the findings warrant
confirmation in prospective cost–benefit studies.
Were any of the findings unexpected?
The purpose of the analysis was to examine tailoring treatments to the
needs of the patients on a population level based on readily available
epidemiological data.
We did however not expect the proposed suggestion to reduce the total health service costs to the extent that it did.
What should clinicians and patients take away from this study?
In light of that treatment of all obese adolescents often is not
fiscally feasible, usually a higher BMI cut-off is used to determine
which obese adolescents to treat, e.g. BMI>35.
The article instead suggests that this decision could be explicitly based on weight
trajectory and treatment history. Nothing can replace clinical
experience and shared decisions with the patient in the individual
case, however having simple heuristics based on readily available data
may aid in screening.
What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of your study?
We would very much like to see a prospective cost-benefit study using
the suggested trajectory based program.
Reference:
History matters: childhood weight trajectories as a basis for planning community-based obesity prevention to adolescents
J Ekberg, M Angbratt, L Valter, M Nordvall and T Timpka
International Journal of Obesity , (17 January 2012) | doi:10.1038/ijo.2011.263