What is it about?
Electronic health services (eHealth) can help reach adults with low-income, but can these services help these adults lose weight? The goal of the current review was to better understand if eHealth weight loss programs work and how these programs are customized for low-income groups.
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Why is it important?
Based on this review, there is limited evidence to suggest eHealth weight loss studies work, however, programs that were more customized to low-income groups tended to work better. As eHealth continues to flourish, additional studies with more rigorous methodology are needed to build our understanding. We must also think twice about our weight-centric approach to obesity, which may be more harmful than helpful in some cases.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure for me for many reasons. While my initial goal was to understand if and how eHealth weight loss programs for low-income adults work, what I took away from this project was much more broad than I had anticipated. One of our reviewers caused me to really re-consider the weight-centric approach to obesity that we often see in this literature and to instead consider whether weight loss should really be the ultimate goal. Because of this reviewer's comments and suggestions, I learned a lot about weight cycling and weight discrimination/stigma, and the effect these concepts have on health. I hope readers of my review have a similar takeaway and that future researchers in this area consider these concepts when developing programs that aim to improve adult health.
Taylor Clark
San Diego State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: eHealth weight loss interventions for adults with low income: A systematic review., Health Psychology, April 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/hea0001278.
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