Efficacy of school-based interventions aimed at decreasing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among adolescents: a systematic review

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 Proquest Dissertations and Theses was also investigated for unpublished trials.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.