Human and Social Capabilities Division, Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa.
Faculty of Health Sciences, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Front Public Health. 2021 Mar 11;9:604439. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.604439. eCollection 2021.
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.
儿童和青少年超重是一个在全球范围内日益严重的公共卫生问题。欧洲和撒哈拉以南非洲的低收入和中等收入国家（LMIC）为这一研究领域的移动健康（mHealth）干预措施提供了足够合适的人群，从中可以吸取经验。本文的目的是确定撒哈拉以南非洲和瑞典预防和治疗儿童及青少年肥胖的 mHealth 干预措施，并报告其效果，为该领域的未来研究提供信息。使用 PubMed、ScienceDirect、EBSCOhost 和 Scopus 对同行评议出版物进行了检索。搜索范围涵盖截至 2019 年 8 月发表的所有文章。搜索字符串包括与 mHealth、超重或肥胖、儿童、青少年或青年以及欧洲和撒哈拉以南非洲各个国家相关的 MeSH 术语。其次，还使用了移动电话、体育活动、运动、饮食、体重、BMI 和健康饮食等自由文本词的组合。报告了来自欧洲的七项研究，但撒哈拉以南非洲没有符合条件的研究。这篇叙述性综述的结果表明，在开发和测试针对儿童和青少年肥胖的 mHealth 干预措施方面，研究不足。需要有一个 mHealth 干预措施的证据基础，这些措施在这些国家中既具有相关性又具有适用性，以遏制儿童和青少年超重和肥胖的流行。由于非洲贫困社区的青少年手机技术普及率很高，因此这些干预措施的采用率可能很高。
