Abstract Objective To verify the efficacy of school-based interventions aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among adolescents in order to develop or improve public health interventions. Design Systematic review… Click to show full abstract
Abstract Objective To verify the efficacy of school-based interventions aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among adolescents in order to develop or improve public health interventions. Design Systematic review of interventions targeting adolescents and/or the school environment. Setting The following databases were investigated: MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL and EMBASE. Proquest Dissertations and Theses was also investigated for unpublished trials. Subjects Adolescents were defined as individuals between the ages of 12 and 17 years. Results A total of thirty-six studies detailing thirty-six different interventions tested among independent samples (n 152 001) were included in the review. Twenty interventions were classified as educational/behavioural and ten were classified as legislative/environmental interventions. Only six interventions targeted both individuals and their environment. Over 70 % of all interventions, regardless of whether they targeted individuals, their environment or both, were effective in decreasing SSB consumption. Legislative/environmental studies had the highest success rate (90·0 %). Educational/behavioural interventions only and interventions that combined educational/behavioural and legislative/environmental approaches were almost equally effective in reducing SSB consumption with success rates of 65·0 and 66·7 %, respectively. Among the interventions that had an educational/behavioural component, 61·5 % were theory-based. The behaviour change techniques most frequently used in interventions were providing information about the health consequences of performing the behaviour (72·2 %), restructuring the physical environment (47·2 %), behavioural goal setting (36·1 %), self-monitoring of behaviour (33·3 %), threat to health (30·6 %) and providing general social support (30·6 %). Conclusions School-based interventions show promising results to reduce SSB consumption among adolescents. A number of recommendations are made to improve future studies.
               
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