The Role Of Parents In Preventing Childhood Obesity The AAPSS



What would you say is the biggest problem facing our children today? The Childhood Obesity Prevention team at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (Children's) developed the training and educational tools. Prevention and management of obesity requires synchronized efforts to improve diet and induce the physical efforts in the early years of children at schools, in families and communities.

Rates of overweight in North American children and adolescents have increased dramatically since the 1970's, 1 leading to calls for action to reverse this trend. Low income families are more likely to buy cheap, unhealthy, processed foods as opposed to healthy, natural foods.

Today, approximately one in five school-aged children (ages 6 to 19) is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and that figure doesn't include children who are considered merely overweight and not obese. As such, children who are non-overweight, non-obese, and otherwise healthy are the main focus of this Guideline.

Children should do at least 30 minutes of moderate activity each day. Primary prevention includes efforts to influence, in healthy directions, the eating and activity behavior of all children. Parents of children who are at higher risk based on genetics or other factors (see above) should be advised of this association and encouraged to limit their fast food restaurant outings.

Childhood obesity is considered a national epidemic and can lead to major health issues later in life. In addition to defining child health within broader parameters Childhood Obesity than mere weight status, health educators must also be very careful to ‘Do no harm' to any of these essential dimensions of health in their efforts to treat or prevent child obesity.

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