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Worksite Environmental Interventions for Obesity Prevention and Control: Evidence from Group Randomized Trials

  • Obesity Prevention (A Must, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Worksites provide multiple advantages to prevent and treat obesity and to test environmental interventions to tackle its multiple causal factors. We present a literature review of group-randomized and non-randomized trials that tested worksite environmental, multiple component interventions for obesity prevention and control paying particular attention to the conduct of formative research prior to intervention development. The evidence on environmental interventions on measures of obesity appears to be strong since most of the studies have a low (4/8) and unclear (2/8) risk of bias. Among the studies reviewed whose potential risk of bias was low, the magnitude of the effect was modest and sometimes in the unexpected direction. None of the four studies describing an explicit formative research stage with clear integration of findings into the intervention was able to demonstrate an effect on the main outcome of interest. We present alternative explanation for the findings and recommendations for future research.

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Conflict of Interest

Isabel Diana Fernandez, Adan Becerra, and Nancy P. Chin declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Epidemiology, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, 265 Crittenden Blvd., CU 420644, Rochester, NY, 14642-0644, USA

    Isabel Diana Fernandez & Adan Becerra

  2. Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, 265 Crittenden Blvd., CU 420644, Rochester, NY, 14642-0644, USA

    Nancy P. Chin

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  1. Isabel Diana Fernandez
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  2. Adan Becerra
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Correspondence to Isabel Diana Fernandez.

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Fernandez, I.D., Becerra, A. & Chin, N.P. Worksite Environmental Interventions for Obesity Prevention and Control: Evidence from Group Randomized Trials. Curr Obes Rep 3, 223–234 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-014-0100-4

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