- Title
- How long does it take to scale-up obesity prevention interventions?
- Creator
- Lee, Karen; Bauman, Adrian; Wolfenden, Luke; Phongsavan, Philayrath; Crane, Melanie
- Relation
- Preventive Medicine Vol. 185, Issue August 2024, no. 108012
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2024.108012
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- Objective: The scale-up of evidence-based interventions is necessary to reverse high rates of obesity. However, scale-up doesn't occur frequently nor in a timely manner. While it has been estimated that takes 14–17 years for research translation to occur, the time taken to scale-up prevention interventions is largely unknown. This study examined the time taken to scale-up obesity prevention interventions across four scale-up pathways. Methods: A sample of obesity prevention interventions that had been scaled-up or implemented at scale were found using a structured search strategy. Included interventions were mapped against four scale-up pathways and timeframes associated with each stage of the scale-up pathway were identified to determine the time taken to scale-up. Results: Of the 90 interventions found that were scaled-up to at least a city-wide level, less than half reported a comprehensive research pathway to scale-up and a third did not report any evidence of efficacy or effectiveness prior to scale-up. The time taken to scale-up ranged from 0 to 5 years depending on the pathway taken. Those following a comprehensive pathway took approximately 5 years to scale-up, while interventions that had only one evidence generating step took between 1 and 1.5 years to scale-up. For the remaining interventions, scale-up occurred immediately post-development without evidence generation. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that the scale-up of obesity prevention interventions can occur more quickly than previous estimates of 14–17 years. Our findings support previous research that scale-up of interventions occurs through a variety of pathways and often scale-up occurs in absence of prior evidence of effectiveness.
- Subject
- scale-up; research translation; scale-up pathways; obesity prevention interventions; SDG 3; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1505976
- Identifier
- uon:55788
- Identifier
- ISSN:0091-7435
- Rights
- x
- Language
- eng
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