The Families Improving Health Together (FIT) Program: Initial evaluation of retention and research in a multispecialty clinic for children with obesity.

BACKGROUND

Obesity affects ∼17% of US children, with parallel increases in multiple comorbidities, especially among African-, Asian-, Hispanic-, and Native-Americans. Barriers to patient retention in pediatric obesity programs include lack of centralized care, and frequent subspecialty MD visits which conflict with patient school attendance and parental work attendance as well as with support service utilization. Lack of integration of multispecialty clinical care with interdisciplinary research is a major barrier to fuller exploration of the treatment, prevention, and understanding of obesity in childhood.

OBJECTIVE

To test the hypothesis, a novel multispecialty/interdisciplinary clinical and research infrastructure with strong emphasis on a primary obesity care physician for children with early-onset (<9 years) obesity (Families Improving health Together [FIT]) could promote lower patient attrition (primary goal) and foster productive research in pediatric obesity (secondary goal).

RESULTS

Data support the hypotheses. Over 15 months, FIT reported a >90% participant retention (

CONCLUSION

This pilot study suggests that an integrated multispecialty/interdisciplinary approach to children with obesity improves patient retention and can be integrated successfully with research.

Informations de copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Obesity Science & Practice published by World Obesity and The Obesity Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declared no conflict of interest. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the positions of the NIH, the DHHS, or the Federal Government.