Involvement of Local Health Departments in Obesity Prevention: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Introduction: Local health department (LHD) obesity prevention (OP) efforts, particularly by rural LHDs, are seemingly uncommon, in part, due to limited infrastructure, workforce capacity, accessible data, and available population-level interventions aimed at social determinants of health (SDOH). Methods: We conducted a scoping review to determine LHD roles in OP efforts and interventions. Inclusion criteria were articles including evidence-based OP and LHD leaders or staff. Articles were coded by type of LHD involvement, data use, intervention characteristics, use of an SDOH lens, and urban or rural setting. Results: We found 154 articles on LHD OP-52 articles met inclusion criteria. Typically, LHDs engaged in only surveillance, initial intervention development, or evaluation and were not LHD led. Data and SDOH lens use were infrequent, and interventions typically took place in urban settings. Conclusion: LHDs could likely play a greater role in OP and population-level interventions and use data in intervention decision making. However, literature is limited. Future research should focus on LHD capacity building, including academicpublic health partnerships. Studies should include rural populations, data, and SDOH frameworks addressing "upstream" factors. KEY WORDS: local health department, obesity prevention, public health data, rural health, social determinants of healthO besity in the United States has risen to 42.4% of adults in 2017-2018, 1 and obesity-related diseases (eg, diabetes, hypertension, cancer) 2 are the leading causes of preventable, premature death. 1,3 Obesity causes are complex; however, diet and physical activity (PA) are major associated factors. 4 Interventions that can be tailored

A Scoping Review of Health Equity Interventions in Governmental Public Health

“…16 Another review observed that smaller and/or rural governmental entities have fewer strategies to combat health disparities than larger and/or urban governmental entities. 17 Looking more specifically at governmental entities' involvement in health equity interventions, one review found that LHD involvement is difficult to ascertain, 18 while others found that community-based interventions in governmental entities were associated with decreasing health disparities. 16,17 This scoping review builds on previous reviews by examining interventions that involve governmental entities that focus on racial/ethnic health equity across the United States.…”

The prevalence of obesity and relationship between obesity indicators and chronic diseases in Northern Shaanxi, China

“…Obesity refers to the disorder of energy balance caused by long-term energy intake exceeding consumption, resulting in the storage of body energy in the form of fat, and the accumulation of fat will damage health [1]. With the development of social economy, obesity has become a common disease, and the number of obese people is gradually increasing, which will lead to some social and economic side effects [2][3][4][5]. Obesity is increasingly concerned.…”