Targeting popular teens in hopes of reducing obesity in their peers may not be effective.
A research team found this method was only "marginally" more effective than targeting obese teens at random, a Loyola University Health System news release reported.
"I don't think targeting popular kids would be worth the extra effort it would take to identify them," David Shoham, PhD, MSPH, senior author of the study said in the news release.
Past studies have shown that a person's circle of friends could have an effect on their weight. Teens who had friends who were more overweight than themselves tended to gain more weight than those with thinner friends; students whose friends were thinner also tended to lose weight.
Researchers surveyed 624 students at a rural high school. Each was asked to name five of their male and female friends and also had their Body Mass Index (BMI) measured.
"You can catch obesity from your friends if they are overweight or obese," Shoham said. "Conversely, if your friends are at healthy weights, you likely will gain less weight."
The team also looked at two weight loss interventions; in one researchers randomly selected a group of overweight teens, in the other researchers selected overweight kids who were popular (based on how many other students named them as a friend).
In the first intervention the school's obesity rate dropped from 24 percent to 19.5 percent; in the second where popular kids were sampled the rate dropped to 18.7 percent.
"Targeting popular kids has been suggested as an approach for fighting obesity, smoking and other unhealthy behaviors in teens," Shoham said. "Our study indicates that unfortunately this approach may not be especially effective."
Further studies will be needed in order to determine the best method of fighting teenage obesity.
"We based our simulations as much as possible on real-world data," Shoham said. "So despite the limitations of our study, we believe it is a significant step forward in designing better and more useful simulations - and also in ruling out interventions that could prove to be dead ends."
