Predictors of engagement during a paediatric, group-based weight-management programme: are programme factors more important than family and child factors?

Weight management programmes aim to reduce childhood obesity but often struggle to recruit and retain participants,1 and few studies have examined predictors of engagement.2 The Active Children Eating Smart (ACES) programme was a government-funded 12-week family-based intervention which targeted a deprived population in Glasgow from 2009 to 2014. During this programme, we set out to prospectively study participants, to identify the baseline characteristics that predicted their engagement with the programme, as well as surveying parents on their satisfaction with the programme after they had completed or exited the programme. Our findings were largely null, making it challenging to achieve publication, but we feel the absence of associations found needs to be reported.