IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0077971.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Costs and Cost-Effectiveness of a School-Based Comprehensive Intervention Study on Childhood Obesity in China

Author

Listed:
  • Liping Meng
  • Haiquan Xu
  • Ailing Liu
  • Joop van Raaij
  • Wanda Bemelmans
  • Xiaoqi Hu
  • Qian Zhang
  • Songming Du
  • Hongyun Fang
  • Jun Ma
  • Guifa Xu
  • Ying Li
  • Hongwei Guo
  • Lin Du
  • Guansheng Ma

Abstract

Background: The dramatic rise of overweight and obesity among Chinese children has greatly affected the social economic development. However, no information on the cost-effectiveness of interventions in China is available. The objective of this study is to evaluate the cost and the cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive intervention program for childhood obesity. We hypothesized the integrated intervention which combined nutrition education and physical activity (PA) is more cost-effective than the same intensity of single intervention. Methods: And Findings: A multi-center randomized controlled trial conducted in six large cities during 2009-2010. A total of 8301 primary school students were categorized into five groups and followed one academic year. Nutrition intervention, PA intervention and their shared common control group were located in Beijing. The combined intervention and its’ control group were located in other 5 cities. In nutrition education group, ‘nutrition and health classes’ were given 6 times for the students, 2 times for the parents and 4 times for the teachers and health workers. "Happy 10" was carried out twice per day in PA group. The comprehensive intervention was a combination of nutrition and PA interventions. BMI and BAZ increment was 0.65 kg/m2 (SE 0.09) and 0.01 (SE 0.11) in the combined intervention, respectively, significantly lower than that in its’ control group (0.82±0.09 for BMI, 0.10±0.11 for BAZ). No significant difference were found neither in BMI nor in BAZ change between the PA intervention and its’ control, which is the same case in the nutrition intervention. The single intervention has a relative lower intervention costs compared with the combined intervention. Labor costs in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Jinan was higher compared to other cities. The cost-effectiveness ratio was $120.3 for BMI and $249.3 for BAZ in combined intervention, respectively. Conclusions: The school-based integrated obesity intervention program was cost-effectiveness for children in urban China. Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR-PRC-09000402 URL:http://www.chictr.org/cn/

Suggested Citation

  • Liping Meng & Haiquan Xu & Ailing Liu & Joop van Raaij & Wanda Bemelmans & Xiaoqi Hu & Qian Zhang & Songming Du & Hongyun Fang & Jun Ma & Guifa Xu & Ying Li & Hongwei Guo & Lin Du & Guansheng Ma, 2013. "The Costs and Cost-Effectiveness of a School-Based Comprehensive Intervention Study on Childhood Obesity in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(10), pages 1-1, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0077971
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077971
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077971
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077971&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0077971?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sharea Ijaz & James Nobles & Laura Johnson & Theresa Moore & Jelena Savović & Russell Jago, 2021. "Preventing Childhood Obesity in Primary Schools: A Realist Review from UK Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(24), pages 1-25, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0077971. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.