Application of the Community Readiness Model for childhood obesity prevention: a scoping review

The Community Readiness Model (CRM) provides an approach to determine community readiness (CR), which is the degree of a community's preparedness to address a health issue. This scoping review aims to characterize internationally existing applications of the CRM for childhood obesity prevention. Therefore, a systematic literature research was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Library, LIVIVO and Google Scholar. Of 285 identified records, 17 studies met the eligibility criteria and were included in the scoping review. The CRM has already been applied to childhood obesity prevention in the USA (n = 10), Australia (n = 4), UK (n = 1), Iran (n = 1) and South Africa (n = 1). Mainly geographically defined communities (n = 12) like counties and cities were analysed but also schools (n = 4) and churches (n = 1). The scoping review revealed various methodological changes to the standard protocol of which some are particularly relevant for the application to childhood obesity prevention. The identified studies reported readiness scores in the low to mid-range of the nine-point readiness scale. To increase CR, strategies were proposed that addressed raising awareness and knowledge of childhood obesity, but also supporting connectivity in and between settings. This scoping review provides researchers and health promoters with an overview of international CR measurements and setting-specific strategies to increase CR. It highlights the potential of targeted interventions to increase readiness and shows tentative support for the assumption of a possible link between CR level and changes in obesity prevalence.