School and Community-Based Childhood Obesity: Implications for Policy and Practice

This introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community on the topic of childhood obesity prevention lays some of the basis for the state of affairs of the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States as of 2012 and the need for and types of existing prevention and intervention efforts underway. At the intersection of public health and community psychology, each of the five articles presents some insights into how prevention and intervention efforts currently underway are fairing and offers some implications for program developers and policy makers to start to turn around the epidemic. Given the key role schools play, successful strategies for engaging schools are presented in the introduction. The authors of this special issue also emphasize the need to involve whole communities in order to attain the intended changes of reductions in overweight and obesity rates and increases in positive health outcomes.