Care of overweight and obese children and adolescents in the Federal Republic of Germany

The contribution of dietitians

Cornelia Goldapp, Reinhard Mann, Köln

A nation-wide quality-orientated inventory of therapeutical institutions for overweight and obesity listed 492 institutions offering about 700 interventions in various regions of the country.

The majority of institutions (67 %) works on an out-patient basis, 18 % prefer an in-patient basis, 10 % combine in- and out-patient work, 5% work on a setting basis. Among those providing obesity treatment for children, institutions offering dietary counselling rank second after hospitals. Dietary counselling institutions have been found to show considerable deficits as far as the quality of structures and processes is concerned. Some potential for improvement primarily exists regarding additional occupational groups to be included for multimodal work, optimization of diagnostic methods and determination of the quota of cases in which therapy was stopped.

Strong points of institutions providing dietary advice are their conceptional work and the integration of parents into the therapeutical efforts. The present study has shown that dietary counselling institutions could fulfil the necessary criteria and provide high-quality therapies for obese children and adolescents.

Keywords: conceptional quality, diagnostic quality, dietary counselling, dietary intervention, out-patient institutions, process quality, selection of target groups, structural quality, therapy of obesity

Sie finden den Artikel in deutscher Sprache in Ernährungs Umschau 07/07 ab Seite 394.