Text Mining of United States Obesity-Related Public Policies: Systematic Document Search (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Obesity has become a health problem worldwide, determined by multiple and complex factors, and face to this challenge, governments have played central role in combating its rise. Considering this fact, public policies are introduced or enacted for the benefit of whole populations, taking into account the prospective of multiverse social stakeholders based on solid scientific fundamentals. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine obesity-related public policies (ORPP) in all US states and District of Columbia, in order to understand their scientific basis. METHODS We analyzed the public policies, as implemented in the United States, in the time window when this health-related trend was a major governmental concern. In total, 1,592 ORPP were selected and analyzed through text mining technique. RESULTS The multidisciplinary area was predominant in the documents analyzed (33.5%), followed by Health Sciences (28.5%), Social Sciences (20.7%), Life Sciences (15.1%) and Physical Sciences (2.2%). Besides, throughout the country most policies were community oriented and many of them were related to school and family environments, early care and education, hospitals and workplaces. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate an appropriate analysis and the use of scientific knowledge by policy makers, highlighting the multidisciplinary approach. The results showed that ORPP contents are generally uniformly framed in all US states. However, the implementation of public policies can be affected by a wide range of factors that challenge its effectiveness.