Counseling to Prevent Obesity Among Preschool Children: Acceptability of a Pilot Urban Primary Care Intervention

M. Diane McKee; Stacia Maher; Darwin Deen; Arthur E. Blank

doi:10.1370/afm.1057

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Primary Care Physicians can play a role in management of childhood obesity.
Robert P. Schwartz

Published on: 17 May 2010

Published on: (17 May 2010)
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Primary Care Physicians can play a role in management of childhood obesity.
Robert P. Schwartz, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Primary care physicians are frustrated with their inability and lack of skills to treat childhood obesity. This article shows that physicians can learn brief counseling skills to help families adopt healthier lifestyles. The study also demonstrates the important role that other health care providers, such as counselors trained in motivational interviewing (MI) can play in the primary care office. MI is a style of commu...
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Primary care physicians are frustrated with their inability and lack of skills to treat childhood obesity. This article shows that physicians can learn brief counseling skills to help families adopt healthier lifestyles. The study also demonstrates the important role that other health care providers, such as counselors trained in motivational interviewing (MI) can play in the primary care office. MI is a style of communication where the goal is to guide, rather than direct the patient as they struggle to made decisons to change or not change their behavior. The counselors conducted 1 hour MI sessions with the parents of young children to address lifestyle behaviors such as eating, physical activity, and sedentary activity. The response from the parents to this intervention was positive. A weakness of the study is the small number of families (total of 18 families) with 14 (78%) being Hispanic. The ultimate test of efficacy will be to find out how many of the families actually made lifestyle changes due to the intervention.
Competing interests: no competing interests
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Competing Interests: None declared.