Promoting health at the community level: thinking globally, acting locally

Prevention of childhood obesity is a societal priority. Despite our knowledge about the scope of the problem and the determinants that lead to it, we have yet to produce meaningful declines in obesity rates. Recent attention has been given to interventions that employ multiple strategies across multiple settings involving whole communities given their promising results. The next era of science calls for interdisciplinary teams who will envision a whole system approach to advance the community-based obesity prevention model. This perspective describes some of the more recent discussions of community-based methodologies such as the ANGELO (Analysis Grid for Environments Linked to Obesity) framework, best-practice principles, and a whole system intervention approach to obesity prevention. The proposed required elements to advance community-based research to address childhood obesity are: A systems perspective and approach, training of future leaders in community research methodology and social change, applying transdisciplinary strategies, funding to conduct rigorous trials to determine efficacy and effectiveness, enhanced design and analysis approaches, new and improved tools and methodologies to collect quantitative and qualitative data, enhanced community engagement models and sustainability frameworks, advancement of a bold public policy agenda, economic modeling, and acknowledgment of the approach as viable. To reverse childhood obesity, we need to embrace and integrate complex strategies at multiple levels within communities across the globe.