Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

Chapter 17
What else can be done to ensure the effectiveness
of programs that promote a healthy weight for children?
Given the fundamental nature of socio - cultural
influences and the available evidence for these three
cultural groups, we recommend that programs to
promote healthy eating, activity and body size during
childhood should:
• integrate socio - cultural factors and culturally
appropriate approaches into their design and
implementation;
• evaluate the socio-cultural environment in interaction
with historical factors and economic, policy
and physical environments
• recognize that culturally specific factors are an asset
rather than a deficit and use cultural structures and
other socio - cultural factors to ensure cultural
relevance
• actively engage key family and community members
and local experts throughout design and implementation
phases
• emphasize healthy eating and activities rather than
weight per se in order to avoid an unhealthy body
image and the uptake of unhealthy strategies to
attain the thin ideal that is promoted by the media
and other Western influences
• recognize that there may be less motivation to
prevent weight gain in ethnic groups that value a
robust body size, and explore culturally tailored
strategies that provide relevant and sufficiently
strong motivations for change in the targeted
parenting behaviors
• Recognize that children are exposed to numerous
competing influences, especially children from
ethnic minority groups who experience strong
influences from within their own group, as well as
from larger ethnic groups.
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