Parent perspectives on attrition from tertiary care pediatric weight management programs.

OBJECTIVE

To describe parent/caregiver reasons for attrition from tertiary care weight management clinics/programs.

STUDY DESIGN

A telephone survey was administered to 147 parents from weight management clinics/programs in the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions' (now Children's Hospital Association's) FOCUS on a Fitter Future II collaborative.

RESULTS

Scheduling, barriers to recommendation implementation, and transportation issues were endorsed by more than half of parents as having a moderate to high influence on their decision not to return. Family motivation and mismatched expectations between families and clinic/program staff were mentioned as influential by more than one-third. Only mismatched expectations correlated with patient demographics and program characteristics. [corrected].

CONCLUSIONS

Although limited by small sample size, the study found that parents who left geographically diverse weight management clinics/programs reported similar reasons for attrition. Future efforts should include offering alternative visit times, more treatment options, and financial and transportation assistance and exploring family expectations.