Campbelltown – Changing our Future: study protocol for a whole of system approach to childhood obesity in South Western Sydney

Abstract

BackgroundIn Australia, around 67% of adults and 25% of children (5–17 years) are currently overweight or obese (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 4364.0.55.001 - National Health Survey: First Results, 2017–18, 2018). The Campbelltown – Changing our Future study will translate ‘a whole of system’ approach, previously trialed in rural communities in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territoty, to Campbelltown Local Government Area (LGA), a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse urban community in south western Sydney, NSW.MethodsThe study intervention will use a five-step approach; 1 – set up a childhood obesity monitoring system by collecting baseline data from children in primary schools across Campbelltown LGA to give a local context to the community when developing the systems map; 2 - key stakeholders develop systems maps which inform the development of the interventions; 3 - key stakeholders and community groups identify priority areas for action and form working groups; 4 - implementation of the interventions; 5 - evaluation of the interventions. The study will adopt a longitudinal pre/post design with repeated measures at baseline, 2 years and 4 years. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to collect and analyse the data.DiscussionAddressing childhood overweight and obesity is complex and requires a multifaceted intervention. This approach has the capacity to impact a range of factors that influence childhood overweight and obesity utilising existing capacity of multiple partners with broad community reach. Findings will develop local responses which capture the complexity of obesity at a community level and further our understanding of the interrelationships and relative importance of local factors impacting childhood overweight and obesity. This study aims to provide evidence for systems methods and approaches suitable for adaption and scaling and may provide evidence of successful community intervention elements.

A System Dynamics and Participatory Action Research Approach to Promote Healthy Living and a Healthy Weight among 10–14-Year-Old Adolescents in Amsterdam: The LIKE Programme

“…This includes the formation of an interdisciplinary consortium of scientists and societal partners, the latter embedded within the AHWP. The AHWP, in itself, provides an exceptional opportunity to achieve the ambitions of the LIKE programme, facilitated by the unique combination of conditions created over the past years, including strong political support, commitment and involvement of community organisations in the objectives of the programme, and involvement of public sectors other than public health (e.g., education, spatial planning) [59]. This means that we do not have to start from scratch in creating community or policy involvement and that a lot of the networks and structures already exist.…”

Tracking implementation within a community-led whole of system approach to address childhood overweight and obesity in south west Sydney, Australia

“…Key components of the intervention include; stakeholder-informed development of CLDs, development of locally-tailored action in response to the drivers of childhood obesity as described in the CLD, formation of key stakeholder and community working groups to prioritise and implement actions, and continuous monitoring of intervention actions. The full protocol for the Change4Campbelltown initiative is published elsewhere [ 17 ], and primary and secondary analyses of the main study outcomes will be presented in future publications.…”

“…In 2017, the Campbelltown - Changing our Future (Change4Campbelltown) [ 17 ] initiative brought together key leaders, the school-sector and community members to translate a ‘whole of system’ approach, previously trialled in rural and regional Australian communities, to the Campbelltown Local Government Area (LGA) in south west Sydney, Australia. The initiative began with the development of a stakeholder-informed CLD, reflecting the underlying logic of obesity drivers for the Campbelltown community, and providing the basis for community-led intervention design.…”

Diverse Approaches to Creating and Using Causal Loop Diagrams in Public Health Research: Recommendations From a Scoping Review

“…In terms of research aims found in the 23 articles, four themes emerged: 1) to examine the complexity of a public health topic and illustrate complex systems thinking [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]; 2) to discuss the complexity of a public health intervention [35][36][37][38][39][40]; 3) to describe study protocol and how CLDs were created [41][42][43][44]; and 4) to illustrate how CLDs can be used to monitor and track initiatives to improve population health or evaluate impact of interventions [45][46][47][48].…”

“…Both primary and secondary data were used for creating CLDs (Table 3). Most articles reported on primary data collection (18/ 23) and this included interviews [26,27,33,[35][36][37][38][39][40], group model building with stakeholders and/or community members [32,41,43,44,46,48], behavioral data [42,47], fieldnotes [37], and workshops with experts [31]. Twelve articles used primary data only.…”