Permanent health education in the context of obesity: a scoping review

OBJETIVE: To map the international literature on Permanent Health Education initiatives to care for people with obesity. METHODS: In total, six databases were searched without any language or publication period restriction according to the Joana Briggs Institute manual for evidence synthesis and the Prisma extension for scoping reviews (Prisma-ScR). Articles were independently analyzed by four reviewers and data, by two authors, which were then analyzed and discussed with our research team. RESULTS: After screening 8,780 titles/abstracts and 26 full texts, 10studies met our eligibility criteria. We extracted data on methodologies, themes, definitions of obesity, outcomes, and gaps. Most initiatives came from North American countries without free or universal health systems and lasted a short period of time (70%), had multidisciplinary teams (70%), and addressed sub-themes on obesity approaches (90%). Results included changes in participants’ understanding, attitude, and procedures (80%) and gaps which pointed to the sustainability of these changes (80%). CONCLUSION: This review shows the scarce research in the area and a general design of poorly effective initiatives, with traditional teaching methodologies based on information transmission techniques, the understanding of obesity as a disease and a public health problem, punctual actions, disciplinary fragmentation alien to the daily work centrality, and failure to recognize problems and territory as knowledge triggers and to focus on health care networks, line of care, the integrality of care, and food and body cultures.