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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1540756
This article is part of the Research Topic Holistic Approaches to Understanding Obesity and Metabolic Diseases in Urban Environments View all 9 articles
Exploring the Multifaceted Factors Influencing Overweight and Obesity: A Scoping Review
Provisionally accepted- 1 Faculty of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Science., tehran, Iran
- 2 Medical Library and Information Science, Asadabad School of Medical Sciences., Asadabad, Iran
Obesity and overweight problems in public health have substantial impacts which affect the health status of individuals and community well-being and healthcare service provision worldwide. This scoping review aims to identify and classify factors from social, technological, environmental, economic and political domains which influence obesity and overweight conditions. The systematic analysis of determinants in this study generates usable information to guide public health intervention design and obesity epidemic management strategies.The study utilized the ProQuest, ISI Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus databases, and it also included grey literature in its analysis. The research objectives focused on identifying factors that contribute to overweight or obesity issues. The researchers used framework analysis to examine the qualitative data collected from these studies.The synthesis incorporated 121 research studies which satisfied the established criteria. This comprised 98 studies from 46 different countries, 17 studies conducted at the international level, and 6 studies involving multiple countries. Eighty-two factors influencing overweight and obesity were identified as determinants and categorized into five main categories: sociocultural, economic, technological, environmental, and political. Most of the identified determinants belong to the socio-cultural category, which demonstrates their substantial impact on lifestyle and health behaviors.The implementation of public health prevention and intervention programs depends on complete knowledge of all factors that affect overweight and obesity rates. This issue needs a comprehensive approach which analyzes sociocultural aspects together with economic, technological, environmental, and political factors, as well as other policy goals within defined societal challenges. Effective solutions to resolve this situation depend on multisectoral collaboration to tackle obesity and promote health-enhancing factors for the entire community.
Keywords: Obesity, Overweight, Socio-cultural determinants, Economic factors, Technological Influences, environmental factors, public health policy, Scoping review
Received: 09 Dec 2024; Accepted: 07 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jalilzadeh, Goharinezhad and Saniee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Salime Goharinezhad, Faculty of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Science., tehran, Iran
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