Problems and possible solutions for interventions among children and adolescents

This chapter provides an overview of childhood obesity causes and discusses the efficacy of potential preventive interventions. Interventions for obesity prevention generally have had no or limited effects with no obvious patterns in findings to guide program development. The chapter assumes imbalances in dietary intake and physical activity account for most of the problem. To elucidate the problems in obesity prevention research, the Mediating Moderating Variable Model (MMVM) is used to deconstruct the variables and pathways from intervention design to change in adiposity, and thereby elucidate problems at each step in intervention design, implementation, and evaluation. As more is learned about these causal pathways, intervention protocols may be developed that offer different or different intensity interventions to subgroups that may need different procedures.