Childhood Obesity: Need for Multipronged Approach.
Sharma & Ickes10 have published an article on psychosocial determinants of childhood obesity. Some of the non-modifiable determinants of obesity that the study identified included genetics, age, height, and having older siblings. Among modifiable factors were physical inactivity, television watching, and nutritional behaviors and environments. Consuming polyunsaturated fatty acids was associated with obesity. Consuming adequate servings of fruits and vegetables was protective against overweight and obesity. Maternal smoking during pregnancy, lack of breast feeding, high birth weight, weight gain in first week of life, and rapid growth in infancy were other modifiable factors for overweight and obesity.
Final set of modifiable factors was related to parents such as parental overweight and obesity, parental education especially maternal education level, and socio-economic status. Commonly suggested modifiable public health strategies to combat childhood obesity are promoting breastfeeding, limiting television viewing, encouraging physical activity, increasing fruit and vegetable intake, controlling portion size, and limiting soft drink consumption.
The family and home based interventions target parents as opposed to children and serve as complementary approaches. The community interventions and policy interventions are difficult to implement. The former require heavy investments of resources while the latter require detailed and intricate planning and advocacy. A new intervention for childhood obesity must start with a school based and after school-based intervention as an entry. It must then have a family and home based and community outreach components. Finally it should tackle policy issues. Such a new
multipronged obesity intervention would be able to effectively reduce the rates of overweight and obesity in children.
Obes Res Open J. 2014; 1(1): e1-e4. doi: 10.17140/OROJ-1-e001
