Conceptual approaches in the prevention of child overweight in Germany—the research project ‘Systematization of Conceptual Approaches’ (SCAP)

Background: Childhood overweight is a serious public health challenge. There is a complex landscape of interventions with multiple subjects, target groups, and approaches for different settings in Germany. Aims: There is a need to get an overview and to analyze the conceptual approaches of interventions on overweight and obesity prevention in childhood and adolescence. Subjects and methods: To provide a systematic overview, SCAP developed as a first step a catalog of descriptive indicators to analyze the conceptual approaches of interventions. The indicators can be assigned to five global dimensions: (1) setting, (2) conceptual approach, (3) target group, (4) quality requirements for the conception of universal prevention (in generic and setting-specific), and (5) determinants. These dimensions were used in the second project step to analyze overweight prevention programs in four settings and to systemize the applied conceptual approaches. The third step entailed identifying gaps, improvement potential, and recommendations for action. Results: This project contributes to the improvement of childhood overweight and obesity prevention measures by focusing on setting-specific approaches. It provides a systematic overview of the approaches, which allows an in-depth overview at both a generic and setting-specific level. Recommendations focused on gaps in evidence concerning implementation and a need of transparency. There are further requirements for coordination, checklists, and an intervention database. Conclusion: The results of the SCAP project can be used in the quality-oriented development of intervention measures, which could make it valuable for the implementation of the new German Preventive Health Care Act.