Background
There is growing evidence for the importance of pregnancy and maternal factors, including maternal weight, general health and the environment for programming weight gain in offspring across the life-course. Pre and postnatal growth, and their interaction, are important for establishing risk factors for obesity.
This suggests that a sharper policy focus on pregnancy and early childhood could be useful in improving the effectiveness of obesity prevention interventions.
Aims and methodology
The specific objectives are to
- identify and describe the key factors which are relevant to obesity prevention in the early years;
- identify and describe national policy in the early years for obesity prevention in order to generate a comprehensive list of policy levers for obesity prevention;
- systematically map these policies onto the key factors related to energy balance behaviours in early life;
- make recommendations about potential opportunities for policy levers to be enabled, additional opportunities where policy could be developed and research gaps.
This study will use a behavioural science approach.
The scoping for the study will be done using the COM-B theoretical model, with policies and other interventions described systematically using the published Behaviour Change Wheel framework.
Timing
End May 2018
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The NIHR Policy Research Unit in Healthy Weight is part of the NIHR and hosted by UCL.