Economic Analysis of a School‐Based Obesity Prevention Program

Abstract

WANG, LI YAN, QUANHE YANG, RICHARD LOWRY, AND HOWELL WECHSLER. Economic analysis of a school-based obesity prevention program. Obes Res. 2003; 11:1313-1324. Objective: To assess the cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit of Planet Health, a school-based intervention designed to reduce obesity in youth of middle-school age children. Research Methods and Procedures: Standard cost-effectiveness analysis methods and a societal perspective were used in this study. Three categories of costs were measured: intervention costs, medical care costs associated with adulthood overweight, and costs of productivity loss associated with adulthood overweight. Health outcome was measured as cases of adulthood overweight prevented and qualityadjusted life years (QALYs) saved. Cost-effectiveness ratio was measured as the ratio of net intervention costs to the total number of QALYs saved, and net-benefit was measured as costs averted by the intervention minus program costs. Results: Under base-case assumptions, at an intervention cost of $33,677 or $14 per student per year, the program would prevent an estimated 1.9% of the female students (5.8 of 310) from becoming overweight adults. As a result, an estimated 4.1 QALYs would be saved by the program, and society could expect to save an estimated $15,887 in medical care costs and $25,104 in loss of productivity costs. These findings translated to a cost of $4305 per QALY saved and a net saving of $7313 to society. Results remained cost-effective under all scenarios considered and remained cost-saving under most scenarios. Discussion: The Planet Health program is cost-effective and cost-saving as implemented. School-based prevention programs of this type are likely to be cost-effective uses of public funds and warrant careful consideration by policy makers and program planners.

New insights into the field of children and adolescents’ obesity: the European perspective

“…13 In the long run, it is possible that these treatments will reduce the burden of obesity, but in the short run, the obesity attributable costs might increase until the prevention programs are effective. 14 The research community has now put more focus on pediatric obesity.…”

Interventions to prevent obesity in children and adolescents: a systematic literature review

“…In a renewed comprehensive literature search, we found one study on children that attempted to analyze cost effectiveness. 14 The study was based on a randomized clinical prevention trial by Gortmaker et al 15 that was included in the earlier SBU report. The authors retrospectively estimated the costs of all interventions, for example, training, instructor time, etc.…”

School- and family-based interventions to prevent overweight in children

“…However, only a very few studies show some positive effects on BMI and/or fat mass. One study suggests gender-specific differences in the effect of intervention on nutritional status (Gortmaker et al 1999;Wang et al 2003). The possible influence of SES on outcome has not been considered so far.…”

“…One of the mostfrequently-cited studies is Planet Health (Gortmaker et al 1999;Wang et al 2003). Over a period of 2 years 1295 ethnically-diverse grade 6 and 7 students from public schools (i.e.…”