Community engagement and pediatric obesity: Incorporating social determinants of health into treatment

Childhood obesity is a complex and multi-faceted problem, with contributors ranging from individual health behaviors to public policy. For clinicians who treat pediatric obesity, environmental factors that impact this condition in a child or family can be difficult to address in a clinical setting. Community-clinic partnerships are one method to address places and policies that influence a person’s weight and health; however, such partnerships are typically geared toward community-located health behavior change rather than the deeper social determinants of health (SDH), limiting effective behavioral change. Community-engaged research offers a framework for developing community-clinic partnerships to address SDH germane to obesity treatment. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between SDH and pediatric obesity treatment, use of community-clinic partnerships to address SDH in obesity treatment, and how community engagement can be a framework for creating and harnessing these partnerships. We present examples of programs begun by one pediatric obesity clinic using community-engagement principles to address obesity.