Physical activity and nutrition education at the school environment aimed at preventing childhood obesity: evidence from systematic reviews.
OBJECTIVE
To organize the main findings and list the most frequent recommendations from systematic reviews of interventions developed at the school environment aimed at reducing overweight in children and adolescents.


DATA SOURCE
Searches for systematic reviews available until December 31, 2014 were conducted in five electronic databases: Cochrane, PubMed, SciELO, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. Manual search for cross-references were also performed.


SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS
Of the initial 2139 references, 33 systematic reviews adequately met the inclusion criteria and were included in the descriptive summary. In this set, interventions with periods of time greater than six months in duration (nine reviews), and parental involvement in the content and/or planned actions (six reviews) were identified as the most frequent and effective recommendations. Additionally, it was observed that boys respond more effectively to structural interventions, whereas girls respond to behavioral interventions. None of the included reviews was able to make inferences about the theoretical basis used in interventions as, apparently, those in charge of the interventions disregarded this component in their preparation.


CONCLUSIONS
Although the summary identified evidence with important applications in terms of public health, there are still gaps to be filled in this field of knowledge, such as the effectiveness of different theoretical models, the identification of the best strategies in relation to gender and age of participants and, finally, the identification of moderating variables to maximize the benefits provided by the interventions.
['Guerra|Paulo Henrique|PH|', 'da Silveira|Jonas Augusto Cardoso|JA|', 'Salvador|Emanuel Péricles|EP|']
D000293:Adolescent D002648:Child D002675:Child, Preschool D005247:Feeding Behavior D005260:Female D006266:Health Education D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009043:Motor Activity D050177:Overweight D063766:Pediatric Obesity D015397:Program Evaluation D012572:School Health Services D055815:Young Adult
Physical activity Nutrition education School Review Overweight Children Atividade física Crianças Educação nutricional Escola Revisão Sobrepeso