Grant: Chair: Implementation Science Chairs in HDCYH - General Pool

Obesity prevalence among youth is not equally distributed across Canada. Children from racially, ethnically and socioeconomically stigmatized groups are disproportionally affected by obesity. Treatment options for managing pediatric obesity are often not accessible nor equally distributed across Canada. Children and teens with obesity are teased and stigmatized on a daily basis, which makes them have unfair and unjust social and healthcare experiences in every facet of their lives. We need to improve these unfair experiences among children and adolescents living with obesity. One way to do this is by improving the way that healthcare professionals apply the pediatric obesity management guidelines as a first line of treatment in primary care to improve quality of care and quality of life of children and teens affected by obesity. To achieve this, we need to better train students and future researchers/ health professionals in implementation science (applying evidence to clinical practice) in the field of pediatric obesity. This Chair is designed to achieve this goal by first creating a youth advisory board of "harder-to-reach" adolescents who are living with obesity that will guide all the Chair's projects. The projects include three research studies over the next five years aimed to: assess internal and external barriers to implementing our new Canadian pediatric obesity guidelines among healthcare professionals caring for diverse youth with obesity across Canada and to create and evaluate the impact of a pilot training program addressing these barriers.