O0198 Oct.4: 3:27pm - Bridging the Gap Between Primary and Tertiary Care: The Role of Community-based Healthy Weight Programs in Childhood Obesity Prevention and Control

Program Goals
Obesity prevalence among children and adolescents in the United States is high and affects about 13.7 million children and adolescents. Numerous adverse health outcomes have been shown to be associated with obesity in children, providing strong support for intervening while they are still young. Intervention in children can come in many forms, but the role of community-based healthy weight programs (HWPs) is growing. Such programs offer families access to treatment for their children in their communities. Although these programs offer children opportunities to improve their health, each program uses different evaluation measures to show effectiveness, making comparisons across programs difficult and limiting critical information needed for appropriate referrals. The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research sought to bring together community-based HWPs to identify the evaluation measures that can be used to improve comparisons across HWPs and facilitate the flow of information for referrals.

Evaluation
This presentation will explore differences across community-based HWPs and highlight how a year-long collaborative project between five community-based HWPs, physicians, and researchers has shed light on the key measures and factors HWPs can include in their program evaluations. Participants will learn what process and outcome measures as well what contextual and sustainability factors are available to evaluate efficacy and guide program improvement for HWPs.

Discussion
Beyond describing what was learned as a result of this collaborative project, this presentation will discuss the critical role community-based HWPs play in obesity treatment, how evaluation of key measures and factors across programs is necessary to ensure children are referred to effective programs, and how a new toolkit will help change the future of HWP evaluation. This presentation will offer practitioners that lead or work with HWPs a better understanding of the key areas necessary for meaningful evaluation. By the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to describe the role community-based HWPs play as an obesity treatment intervention, understand the benefits of standardized measurement of program outcomes, and learn how to acquire the tools to help practitioners implement program evaluation targeted to the needs and resources of their program.