Childhood Obesity
Key points
- An epidemic of childhood obesity and overweight, to which social, economic, and human behaviors have contributed, threatens long-term medical, psychosocial, and financial consequences beyond US society's current capacity to respond.
- Practicing physicians are familiar with the increasing number of obese and overweight adults living with multiple and chronic illnesses, requiring complex and expensive care, and dying prematurely.
- In addressing this disturbing trend and preventing its spread, physicians are challenged to look to the broader environment.
- Author Affiliation: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey.
An epidemic of childhood obesity and overweight, to which social, economic, and human behaviors have contributed, threatens long-term medical, psychosocial, and financial consequences beyond US society's current capacity to respond. How the epidemic is controlled will be about the art and practice of social and behavioral change as well as the art and science of medicine. Missing from much of the public discussion is what the epidemic means to medical practice and the role of physicians as agents of prevention and change.
Practicing physicians are familiar with the increasing number of obese and overweight adults living with multiple and chronic illnesses, requiring complex and expensive care, and dying prematurely. The epidemic's clinical effects are now evident in younger patients with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia.
In addressing this disturbing trend and preventing its spread, physicians are challenged to look to the broader environment.
The Childhood Obesity Epidemic: Prevalence and Impact
The Food Trust
Arkansas Center for Health Improvement
Alliance for a Healthier Generation
Author Affiliation: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey.
What It Means for Physicians
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA
JAMA. 2007;298(8):920-922.
Vol. 298 No. 8, August 22/29, 2007
Written and revised by
Gerald Hurowitz, M.D.
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