| Summary: | The prevention of poor health habits among children and adolescents has the potential to create improved health throughout the life span. In order to be better able to initiate health promotion and preventive interventions, it is important to get an overview of the effectiveness of such initiatives. We included six systematic reviews of high methodological quality. We found no systematic reviews on the effectiveness of social health promotion intervention for children and adolescents that met our inclusion criteria. The reviews were broad (therefore, interventions were described in general terms only). Based on our synthesis of the results and assessment of the quality of the documentation for long-term effects of the health promotion and preventive interventions in the six included systematic reviews, we can draw the following conclusions:1. School-based initiatives to promote a healthy diet may possibly lead to higher intakes of fruits and vegetables in children and adolescents.2. The documentation was too limited to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of school-based interventions to promote physical activity in children and adolescents.3. Preventive interventions that focus on physical activity and nutritional education to prevent obesity among 0-5 year-olds may possibly not lead to less obesity.4. The documentation was too limited to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of preventive interventions that focus on increasing physical activity and healthy eating to prevent obesity in children and adolescents aged 6-18 years.5. Abstinence-only interventions may possibly not be effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy among children and adolescents.6. Abstinence-plus interventions may possibly not be effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy among children and adolescents
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