Youth Peer Led Lifestyle Modification Interventions: A Narrative Literature Review.
The prevalence of obesity remains high among school age children and continues to rise among adolescents in the United States. One strategy to address this challenge is to use peer rather than professional leaders to run weight management programs. Youth peer-led lifestyle interventions have become increasingly common over the last few decades, but there is a lack of review and synthesis of these programs. The purpose of this manuscript was to critically review and synthesize results and lessons learned from evaluated youth peer-led lifestyle modification and weight management programs. We searched the PubMed/MEDLINE database to identify articles published between March 2002 and December 2015. We identified 29 interventions including children from kindergarten to 12th grade from different settings and racial/ethnic and economic backgrounds. We first summarized descriptive information about the interventions and then compared outcomes based on intervention type, peer leader characteristics and training, and other related factors. Our review indicated that youth peer-led interventions of varying structure and content can result in positive changes in behavioral influences, diet, physical activity, body measures and other clinical outcomes. We used information from our analysis to formulate recommendations for design of future youth peer-led lifestyle interventions.
['Vangeepuram|Nita|N|', 'Angeles|Jesenia|J|', 'Lopez-Belin|Patricia|P|', 'Arniella|Guedy|G|', 'Horowitz|Carol R|CR|']
D000293:Adolescent D002648:Child D015444:Exercise D006801:Humans D008019:Life Style D009765:Obesity D010379:Peer Group D015397:Program Evaluation D014481:United States
youth obesity diet physical activity health education peer led interventions