Pediatric overweight and obesity is a grave public health issue in the United States. With overweight and obesity come significant physical health problems, psychological problems, social problems, and school problems. In 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics published clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. However, health care providers are not using these guidelines due to a variety of barriers already identified in the literature. Treatment of overweight and obese students in SBHCs presents unique problems; however, this has not been assessed in the existing literature. This project identified unique barriers to treatment in SBHCs, including lack of parent or guardian presence and difficulties in promoting continuity of care between the SBHCs and PCPs. From this work, we can begin to develop interventions to help address these issues within the school-based clinical setting. Identifying barriers to guideline implementation will empower school-based health providers to address these barriers, perhaps leading to the implementation of changes that transform these barriers into facilitators. These actions may improve the quality of care provided to overweight and obese pediatric patients, which could also lead to positive impacts on BMI and may improve health outcomes for overweight and obese children.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.