Access to Multidisciplinary Care for Pediatric Weight Management: Exploring Perspectives of the Health Care Team within Canada and the United States.

In Canada and the United States, most families referred for pediatric weight management services do not start treatment. Of families who initiate care, many discontinue before the program ends. Parents and youth have reported difficulties in accessing services as an important barrier to starting or completing programming. The purpose of this study was to understand barriers and identify potential solutions related to access to care from the perspective of health care team members from Canada and the United States. Qualitative description method guided the study design. Participants were health care team members, purposefully recruited through Canadian and US-based pediatric weight management program registries. Telephone interviews were conducted with participants between February and May 2017. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using content analysis. Eighteen individuals from 16 sites participated ( = 8 Canada,  = 8 United States). Access barriers and potential solutions were related to: (1) referral and eligibility, (2) wait lists and program capacity, (3) logistics and costs, and (4) stigma and weight bias. Barriers were similar between Canadian and US sites, with the exception of cost-related barriers. Health care providers from Canada and the United States reported multiple societal, organizational, service, and family-level barriers to accessing multidisciplinary pediatric weight management care. Proposed solutions suggest that service providers can play a key role alongside families to improve access to appropriate care. Further research is needed to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of proposed solutions.