Synopsis of the World Health Organization Guidelines on Childhood and Adolescent Obesity Management

Childhood and adolescent obesity is a complex, multifactorial condition resulting in long-term health issues alongside diminished quality of life, educational attainment and overall wellbeing. The World Health Organization (WHO) prioritised the development of two guidelines on people-centred, integrated management and care of (1) children and (2) adolescents with obesity. Key topics included dietary, physical activity, and behaviour changing interventions, multimodal approaches, digital health interventions, pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery. WHO strongly recommends a multidisciplinary approach to obesity management delivered and supervised by health workers, including dietary, physical activity and behaviour changing interventions delivered individually or as part of multimodal interventions. WHO conditionally recommends digital health interventions under strict parental supervision on content and recreational screen time. Pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery are not recommended for children. These interventions may be considered for adolescents after close consideration of physical and psychological development and should be prescribed and delivered in a specialised multidisciplinary setting. All WHO regions and countries are eligible for the implementation of these guidelines. They should be integrated into a continuum-of-care approach within existing child and adolescent health programmes, with strong intersectoral collaboration to enhance sustainability and scale-up. The development of these guidelines followed a living methodology; future updates will consider emerging evidence on interventions, indicators, dosages, values and preferences, human rights, equity and gender considerations, intervention coverage, impact of new technologies and social media and the need for recommendations for specific populations.