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Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research

Child and adolescent overweight is a growing public health problem globally. Europe and low and middle-income (LMIC) countries in Sub-Saharan Africa provide sufficiently suitable populations to learn from with respect to the potential for mobile health (mHealth) interventions in this area of researc...

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Autores principales: Reddy, Priscilla, Dukhi, Natisha, Sewpaul, Ronel, Ellahebokus, Mohammad Ali Afzal, Kambaran, Nilen Sunder, Jobe, William
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7991289/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33777878
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.604439
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author Reddy, Priscilla
Dukhi, Natisha
Sewpaul, Ronel
Ellahebokus, Mohammad Ali Afzal
Kambaran, Nilen Sunder
Jobe, William
author_facet Reddy, Priscilla
Dukhi, Natisha
Sewpaul, Ronel
Ellahebokus, Mohammad Ali Afzal
Kambaran, Nilen Sunder
Jobe, William
author_sort Reddy, Priscilla
collection PubMed
description Child and adolescent overweight is a growing public health problem globally. Europe and low and middle-income (LMIC) countries in Sub-Saharan Africa provide sufficiently suitable populations to learn from with respect to the potential for mobile health (mHealth) interventions in this area of research. The aim of this paper is to identify mHealth interventions on prevention and treatment of childhood and adolescent obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Sweden and report on their effects, in order to inform future research in this area. A search of peer-reviewed publications was performed using PubMed, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and Scopus. The search included all articles published up to August 2019. The search strings consisted of MeSH terms related to mHealth, overweight or obesity, children, adolescents or youth and individual countries in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, a combination of free-text words; mobile phone, physical activity, exercise, diet, weight, BMI, and healthy eating was also used. Seven studies were reported from Europe and no eligible studies from Sub-Saharan Africa. The results of this narrative review indicate a lack of research in the development and testing of mHealth interventions for childhood and adolescent obesity. There is a need for an evidence base of mHealth interventions that are both relevant and appropriate in order to stem the epidemic of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in these countries. Uptake of such interventions is likely to be high as there is high penetrance of mobile phone technology amongst adolescents, even within poor communities in Africa.
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spelling pubmed-79912892021-03-26 Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research Reddy, Priscilla Dukhi, Natisha Sewpaul, Ronel Ellahebokus, Mohammad Ali Afzal Kambaran, Nilen Sunder Jobe, William Front Public Health Public Health Child and adolescent overweight is a growing public health problem globally. Europe and low and middle-income (LMIC) countries in Sub-Saharan Africa provide sufficiently suitable populations to learn from with respect to the potential for mobile health (mHealth) interventions in this area of research. The aim of this paper is to identify mHealth interventions on prevention and treatment of childhood and adolescent obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Sweden and report on their effects, in order to inform future research in this area. A search of peer-reviewed publications was performed using PubMed, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and Scopus. The search included all articles published up to August 2019. The search strings consisted of MeSH terms related to mHealth, overweight or obesity, children, adolescents or youth and individual countries in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, a combination of free-text words; mobile phone, physical activity, exercise, diet, weight, BMI, and healthy eating was also used. Seven studies were reported from Europe and no eligible studies from Sub-Saharan Africa. The results of this narrative review indicate a lack of research in the development and testing of mHealth interventions for childhood and adolescent obesity. There is a need for an evidence base of mHealth interventions that are both relevant and appropriate in order to stem the epidemic of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in these countries. Uptake of such interventions is likely to be high as there is high penetrance of mobile phone technology amongst adolescents, even within poor communities in Africa. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-03-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7991289/ /pubmed/33777878 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.604439 Text en Copyright © 2021 Reddy, Dukhi, Sewpaul, Ellahebokus, Kambaran and Jobe. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Reddy, Priscilla
Dukhi, Natisha
Sewpaul, Ronel
Ellahebokus, Mohammad Ali Afzal
Kambaran, Nilen Sunder
Jobe, William
Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title_full Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title_fullStr Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title_full_unstemmed Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title_short Mobile Health Interventions Addressing Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe: Current Landscape and Potential for Future Research
title_sort mobile health interventions addressing childhood and adolescent obesity in sub-saharan africa and europe: current landscape and potential for future research
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7991289/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33777878
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.604439
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