Target under-fives against obesity - world expert

Tuesday July 13th, 2010

Efforts to stop childhood obesity should concentrate on pre-school infants, an expert said yesterday.

Results of a major study of community interventions found them most successful with under-fives.

The Australian project worked with thousands of children in four countries at a cost of just 100,000 Australian dollars.

Projects worked with pre-school children, with primary school children and with teenagers.

The findings were revealed yesterday at the International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm, Sweden.

Health workers worked with 12,000 under-fives through pre-school, day care and through maternal and child health services. This led to a three percentage point reduction in obesity among infants - based on rates among children not involved in the programme.

The project took place in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga.

Researcher Professor Boyd Swinburn, a World Health Organisation-backed expert at Deakin University, Australia, said work with teenagers had mixed results.

It had little impact on the two Pacific islands, he said.

He said: "Once you get to high-school aged children, trying to implement an intervention at the whole community level becomes more difficult because high schools have a larger catchment area and parents and other organisations are less engaged.

"The usual health promotion activities - such as those aimed at increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables, improving the healthiness of foods available at school, improving body image and reducing inappropriate dieting, promoting breakfast, decreasing consumption of high-sugar drinks while increasing water consumption, and increasing active transport - haven?t been enough for many ethnic groups and we now need to go back and think about how best to intervene with them."

Tags: Australia | Child Health | Diet & Food | Europe | Fitness | World Health

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