The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is engaging in a rigorous assessment of the available scientific evidence to better understand appropriate, high-quality natural experiment research designs in the field of obesity prevention and control. The NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP); National Cancer Institute (NCI); National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI); and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) are sponsoring the Pathways to Prevention Workshop: Methods for Evaluating Natural Experiments in Obesity on December 5–6, 2017, in Bethesda, Maryland.

The workshop seeks to clarify the following questions:

1. What population-based data sources have been used in studies of how programs, policies, or built environment changes affect or are associated with obesity prevention and control outcomes?
2. What methods have been used to link different population-based data sources?
3. What obesity measures, dietary and physical behaviors, and other outcomes have been assessed in studies of how programs, policies, or built environment changes affect or are associated with obesity prevention and control?
4. Which experimental and non-experimental methods have been used in studies of how programs, policies, or built environment changes affect or are associated with obesity prevention and control outcomes?
5. What are the risks of bias in studies of how programs, policies, or built environment changes affect or are associated with obesity prevention and control outcomes?
6. What methodological/analytic advances (e.g., data system features, approaches to linking data sources, or analytic methods) would help to strengthen efforts to estimate the effect of programs, policies, or built environment changes on obesity prevention and control?