Effects of programs and interventions related to the social environment on childhood and adolescent obesity: A systematic search for and scoping review of natural experiments

Abstract

Given the potential importance of social environment on obesity and to better understand their causal relationship amongst children and adolescents, this scoping review systematically searches for and evaluates programs and interventions using natural experiment designs. A majority of the studies assessing peer and social norm effects reported significant findings. Peer effects with nontrivial effect sizes likely have practical implications for interventions, while a strong conclusion cannot be drawn for social norm and neighborhood safety effects. Leveraging naturally occurring data might provide future research with a promising way of establishing a more robust causal inference for the topic of interest.

Keywords: Childhood and adolescent obesity; Natural experiments; Neighborhood safety; Peers and norms; Scoping review; Social environment.