Technical Paper 1:
Obesity in Australia: a need for urgent action
4.7.2 - Guidelines and training
- 1 - Executive summary
2 - Obesity in Australia- 3 - Obesity prevention
4 - Potential initiatives- 4.1 - Reshaping the food supply towards lower risk products and pricing
- 4.2 - Food composition
- 4.3 - Food subsidies
- 4.4 - Protect children and others from inappropriate advertising of unhealthy foods and beverages
- 4.5 - Improve public education and information
- 4.6 - Reshape urban environments towards healthy options
- 4.7 - Strengthen, upskill and support primary health care and public health workforce to support people in making healthier choices
- 4.8 - Maternal and child health
- 4.9 - Close the gap for disadvantaged communities
- 4.10 - Build the evidence base, monitor and evaluate effectiveness of actions
- Conclusion
- References
- Addendum for October 2008 to June 2009
The NHMRC ‘Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults’ and ‘Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Children and Adolescents’ have not been updated since 2003. Limited training and a lack of appropriate knowledge and skills among family doctors and other primary healthcare professionals are common barriers to providing care to overweight and obese individuals.[32, 135, 172, 173]
Research has identified a range of areas in which health professionals working with overweight and obese patients could benefit from training in evidence-based approaches to the management of overweight and obesity in clinical practice. Professional education should reflect the rise in prevalence of obesity in Australia.[135] A recent study of Australian university medical, dietetic and nursing curricula found that, among the limited number of courses surveyed, while most of the undergraduate courses appeared to provide a reasonable number of hours related to training on obesity, professional training by the specialist medical colleges was less comprehensive and not specific to obesity.[135]
A Cochrane systematic review examined studies of providers’ management of obesity or the organisation of care to improve provider practice or patient outcomes.[136] Reminder systems, brief training interventions, shared care, in-patient care and dietitian-led treatments may all be worth further investigation to improve obesity management.
Develop and disseminate evidence based clinical guidelines and other multidisciplinary training packages for health and community workers.
Expand community placements for training of primary healthcare workforce.