Resident Physician Corewell Health Children’s Royal Oak, Michigan, United States
Background: Childhood obesity is a critical public health issue. The primary care setting provides an accessible avenue for management. However, primary care physicians report significant barriers to success in treating this condition. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare clinician perception of pediatric overweight and obesity management before and after implementation of a standardized treatment protocol based on the clinical practice guidelines released by the American Academy of Pediatrics in January 2023. Design/Methods: This study was deemed exempt by the Institutional Review Board. A survey was created by the study team to assess 5 domains: disease knowledge, current practice, management satisfaction, clinician confidence, and perceived treatment success. Physicians were asked to respond with the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with 19 different statements on a Likert Scale from 1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree (Figure 1). This voluntary, anonymous survey was administered to Pediatric and Internal Medicine-Pediatric providers in an outpatient residency clinic prior to the initiation of a pilot study standardizing overweight and obesity management. Exclusion criteria were non-categorical residents, contingent faculty, and incomplete surveys. The survey was re-administered 6 months after implementation of the pilot study. Responses were stored within REDCap. Data analysis was completed with R Version 4.0.4 using unpaired t-tests to compare responses pre- and post-protocol implementation. Results: The pre-pilot survey was administered to 49 providers; 22 surveys were included in analysis. The post-pilot survey was administered to 38 providers; 24 surveys were included in analysis. The only statistically significant change after implementation of the standardized protocol was less agreement to the statement, “The standard of care for treating pediatric overweight/obesity in my clinic could be improved” (pre=4.6+SD vs post=4.1+SD, p=0.02). Summary of results can be seen in Figure 2.
Conclusion(s): In this small survey study, provider perceptions of pediatric overweight/obesity management were mostly unchanged after implementation of a standardized treatment protocol. These findings were unexpected as providing standardized guidelines and educational resources for patients was expected to positively change providers’ perception of treating overweight/obesity. Further studies are needed to assess if these results are reproducible in other programs or settings and whether these findings contribute to the lack of success in treating pediatric obesity.
.png)
