Cost-Effectiveness of the EdAl (Educació en Alimentació) Program: A Primary School-Based Study to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Marta Conesa, Elisabet Llaurado, Magaly Aceves Martins, David Morina, Oriol de Sola-Morales, Montse Giralt, Lucia Tarro, Rosa Sola

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)
10 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

BACKGROUND:
The cost-effectiveness of childhood obesity prevention interventions is critical for their sustained implementation. This study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of the Educació en Alimentació (EdAl) program, a school-based intervention for reducing obesity.

METHODS:
Total EdAl program implementation costs and per-child costs were estimated. Cost-effectiveness, defined using the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), was estimated as the difference between the intervention and control group costs divided by the obesity-related outcome effects for boys (avoided cases of obesity, obesity prevalence, body mass index [BMI], and BMI z-score units) for each group. As a significant difference (4.39%) in the reduction of obesity prevalence between the intervention and control groups was observed for boys in the EdAl program, the data were calculated only for boys.

RESULTS:
The intervention cost was 24,246.53 € for 1,550 children (15.64 €/child/3 years) or 5.21 €/child/year. The ICERs/boy were 968.66 € to avoid one case of obesity, 3.6 € to reduce the obesity prevalence by 1%, 44.68 € to decrease BMI by one unit, and 65.16 € to reduce the BMI z-score by one unit.

CONCLUSIONS:
The cost of reducing the obesity prevalence in boys by 4.39% was 5.21 €/child/year, half the cost proposed by the Spanish Health Ministry, indicating that the EdAl program is cost-effective.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)477-481
Number of pages5
JournalJournal of Epidemiology
Volume28
Issue number12
Early online date28 Jul 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

We sincerely thank all the participants in this study, their families, and the schools. # MC and ELL contributed equally to this manuscript. This work was supported by a fellowship granted to MC from the “Santander CRUE CEPYME Prácticas en Empresa”. D.M. was partially supported by grants from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-ISCIII (Spanish Government) cofunded by FEDER funds=European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) - a way to build Europe (References: RD12=0036=0056, PI11=02090 and PI16=01254) and from the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (2014SGR756) and RecerCaixa 2015 (2015ACUP00129). Conflicts of interest: None declared.

Supplementary data related to this article can be found at https:==
doi.org=10.2188=jea.JE20170111.

Keywords

  • Cost-effectiveness
  • school-based interventions
  • childhood obesity
  • Prevention

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Cost-Effectiveness of the EdAl (Educació en Alimentació) Program: A Primary School-Based Study to Prevent Childhood Obesity'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this