Background: Despite an obvious stabilization the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity is still too high. Since childhood obesity may track into adulthood and lead to major health consequences, effective primary prevention programs are of high relevance.
Objective: In recent years several universal primary prevention programs, measures or projects have been developed and evaluated in Germany. This paper gives an overview.
Methods: An internet search and a search in the archive of the Deutsche Ärzteblatt were conducted to identify universal programs in Germany from 2006 to 2015. We used the combination of primary prevention, children, obesity and project for this online search.
Results: We identified 38 programs and measures. After exclusion of non-adequate interventions (e. g. selective instead of universal) and any duplicates we selected 13 projects to be described.
Discussion: Some projects provided insufficient information since they have not been adequately published. On the positive side, most projects simultaneously addressed various potential risk factors and achieved a successful networking of various relevant actors. In addition, many projects strived for creating the groundwork to allow for a sustainable change in the living environment of children. However, despite the fact that the concept of most projects was theory-based in most cases only weak intervention effects were observed on strong endpoints like anthropometric indicators and on health-related behaviors.
Keywords: Evaluation; Nutrition; Physical activity; Sustainability; Theory-based.