Weight Care Project: Health professionals' attitudes and ability to assess body weight status - Study protocol

This all-Ireland multi-disciplinary project follows a mixed methods approach using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and consists of four components:1. Literature review - to explore the role of health professionals in managing obesity through spontaneous intervention in a variety of health promotion settings.2. Telephone interviews and focus groups - to gain an in-depth insight into the views of health professionals in assessing body weight status.3. Survey (primarily online but also paper-based) - to determine the attitudes, current practices/behaviours and knowledge of health professionals in assessing body weight status.4. Online evaluation study - an online interactive programme will be developed to assess health professionals' ability to identify the body weight status of adults and children.This project will assess and report the attitudes, current practices/behaviours and knowledge of key health professional groups within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on body weight status, and their ability to identify body weight status in both adults and children. The results of this project will generate recommendations for clinical practice in managing obesity, which may inform policy guidelines.Obesity is a growing global epidemic [1] and Ireland is no exception with obesity in Irish adults increasing by at least 1% every year [2]. Data from The North/South Ireland Food Consumption Survey observed that on an all-Ireland basis 39% of the adult population were overweight and 18% were obese [3]. This is supported by the SLáN Survey 2007 [4,5] in the Republic of Ireland. Data from children indicated that almost one in four boys and over one in four girls were either overweight or obese in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland [6]. The Report of the National Taskforce on Obesity [2] also highlighted the importance of managing obesity in Ireland and provided over 80 recommendations. Therefore, obesity is a key public health issue wit