The Families Improving Health Together (FIT) Program: Initial evaluation of retention and research in a multispecialty clinic for children with obesity

Background Obesity affects ∼17% of US children, with parallel increases in multiple comorbidities, especially among African‐, Asian‐, Hispanic‐, and Native‐Americans. Barriers to patient retention in pediatric obesity programs include lack of centralized care, and frequent subspecialty MD visits which conflict with patient school attendance and parental work attendance as well as with support service utilization. Lack of integration of multispecialty clinical care with interdisciplinary research is a major barrier to fuller exploration of the treatment, prevention, and understanding of obesity in childhood. Objective To test the hypothesis, a novel multispecialty/interdisciplinary clinical and research infrastructure with strong emphasis on a primary obesity care physician for children with early‐onset (90% participant retention (p