Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

CHAPTER 30
Working with s chools
Goof Buijs 1 and Sue Bowker 2
1 Schools for Health in Europe Network, Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion,
Woerden, The Netherlands
2 Health Improvement Division, Department of Public Health and Health Professionals,
Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff, UK
Summary and recommendations
for research and practice
• Dealing with obesity in schools includes promoting
healthy eating, physical activity and mental health.
• School-based interventions have proven moderately
effective in preventing obesity, with strong evidence
where a whole school approach has been adopted.
• There is evidence to support the use of multi-faceted,
school - based interventions to reduce obesity and
overweight in schoolchildren, particularly girls.
• Interventions include nutrition education, physical
activity promotion, reduction in sedentary behavior,
behavioral therapy, teacher training, curricular
material and modification of school meals and tuck
shops.
• The health promoting school approach offers the
most suitable framework for introducing and implementing
obesity - prevention programs in schools.
• Action in schools on preventing obesity should be
seen as part of a wider intervention framework in the
school community and actively involving parents.
• School-based programs on preventing obesity
that include active participation of students are
promising.
• Better use should be made of countries ’ experiences
on developing and implementing school - based programs
on preventing overweight.
Preventing Childhood Obesity. Edited by
E. Waters, B.A. Swinburn, J.C. Seidell and R. Uauy.
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing.
Introduction
In Europe, close to one in four school children is
overweight, with numbers rapidly increasing. Similar
trends are observed worldwide. There is a growing
concern about the rising prevalence rates of obesity
among the general population, and specifically for our
younger generation. The prevention of obesity is
regarded as a major public health concern both at the
international and at the national level; and an integrated
approach is required to halt and reverse this
trend. In most policy documents on obesity (such as
the 2005 European Union Green Paper on the prevention
of overweight 1 and the WHO paper on the challenge
of obesity in the European region 2 ) the focus is
on children and young people. Schools are regarded
as a key setting for health promoting interventions,
and can contribute to the improvement of children ’ s
health by promoting healthy eating and physical activity,
by providing a suitable environment which
encourages their participation and by developing their
skills.
This chapter describes the role schools can play in
the prevention of obesity. Since the early 1990s, school
health promotion has strongly evolved. Several reviews
have demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach.
It is now also clear that when dealing with the prevention
of obesity in schools, it is not only the promotion
of healthy eating and physical activity that should
be included, but also aspects of mental health promotion
(such as self - esteem, body image, dieting, eating
disorders). But schools cannot, and do not have to, do
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