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Fighting obesity in children from European World Health Organization member states Epidemiological data, medical-social aspects, and prevention programs
Nittari et al. (2019) expose the alarming rate at which obesity has grown over the past 40 years, particularly in Europe. In 1975, the rates of obesity and overweight were less than 5% and 10%, respectively, in most European countries. However, this trend was evidently reversed, with recent prevalence rates reported to be over 30% for overweight and over 10% for obesity. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the prevention programs that were implemented by the WHO European Region thereafter. The WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative stated that the children were overeating and not doing enough physical exercise. The different prevention programs employed featured: consumption of healthy foods, physical exercise, care before conception and during pregnancy, early childhood, school age children, weight management, monitoring and evaluation. The conclusion was that it is easier to act on the adoption of healthy eating habits than intervene with diets on children who already have weight issues. This paper therefore advocates for the prioritization of primary prevention programs at a national and international level since they can potentially tackle the spread of diseases associated with obesity. [NPID: diet, adolescence, obesity, Europe, WHO, children, youth obesity, pregnancy, prevention, prevention programs]
Year: 2019
