Archives of Public Health

Background: The prevalence of childhood obesity, which has seen a rapid increase over the last decade, is now considered a major public health problem. Current treatment options are based on the two important frameworks of schooland family-based interventions; however, most research has yet to compare the two frameworks in the treatment of childhood obesity. The objective of this review is to compare the effectiveness of school-based intervention with family-based intervention in the treatment of childhood obesity. Methods: Databases such as Medline, Pub med, CINAHL, and Science Direct were used to execute the search for primary research papers according to inclusion criteria. The review included a randomised controlled trial and quasi-randomised controlled trials based on familyand school-based intervention frameworks on the treatment of childhood obesity. Results: The review identified 1231 articles of which 13 met the criteria. Out of the thirteen studies, eight were family-based interventions (n = 8) and five were school-based interventions (n = 5) with total participants (n = 2067). The participants were aged between 6 and 17 with the study duration ranging between one month and three years. Family-based interventions demonstrated effectiveness for children under the age of twelve and school-based intervention was most effective for those aged between 12 and 17 with differences for both long-term and short-term results. Conclusions: The evidence shows that familyand school-based interventions have a considerable effect on treating childhood obesity. However, the effectiveness of the interventional frameworks depends on factors such as age, shortor long-term outcome, and methodological quality of the trials. Further research studies are required to determine the effectiveness of familyand school-based interventions using primary outcomes such as weight, BMI, percentage overweight and waist circumference in addition to the aforementioned factors.