Bio-Psychosocial Approaches
These approaches look for interventions across the biological, psychological, and social environment of the child. The biological factors focus on the genetic predispositions, temperament, allostatic process, genetic susceptibility, and homeostatic processes (Russell & Russell, 2019). Psychosocial factors focus on the child's environment, including parenting, appetitive traits, energy expenditure, parenting feeding patterns, and food intake.
Figure 1: Bio-Psychosocial factors
Note: The image above shows the process of psychological factors, social factors and genetic factors.
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Obesity Management
Managing the symptoms and complications that come with obesity have also been explored. The management strategies include baseline assessment of children with obesity, providing support, advice, and therapy to identified patients through individualized treatment and multi-modal team-based management strategies, supervised lifestyle interventions and referrals to specialists, and re-evaluating the strategies to conduct necessary interventions. Such revisions include preventing weight regain, assess comorbidities and complications, and suggesting metabolic surgery for worsened cases.
Figure 2. Referral of obesity patients to specialist
Note: This model shows the various steps in providing special support to obesity patients.
However, with these approaches, the issue of childhood obesity is tackled once it has already developed. They are reparative rather than preventive.
New Findings
There is a need to create preventive approaches that seek to eliminate the problem before it develops. The new strategies seek to tackle the issue when children are two years and below. Strategies include;
Policy Changes
Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages to reduce consumption.
Figure 3 : Logical pathway between taxation of SSBs and reducing obesity
Note : Reducing taxes has the efficacy of reducing childhood obesity prevalence
School food policies to promote healthy food choices
Zoning restrictions against fast-food joints and restaurants.
Restrictions on voluntary advertisements and employing counter-advertisement to display the harm caused by unhealthy eating.
Community Interventions
Promoting exclusive breastfeeding (Barbara, Mark, Helen, Neil, 2020).
Home interventions through frequent weight monitoring (Yoshida & Simoes, 2018)
Community nutritional support
School intervention programs
Figure 4: New findings
Note : policy changes and community interventions aimed at reducing childhood obesity.
Conclusion
Prevention and management of childhood obesity is a concern to communities and the government. Numerous strategies have been formulated in the past as a way to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity. Such interventions have included considering the child as a product of their genes and environment and formulating policies that incorporate these aspects. Management approaches have also been employed to detect obesity, provide support and referrals for further help. However, the reparative interventions only create a cycle where children become overweight and grow with the complications as others who are born suffer a similar fate. Therefore, prevention must focus on cutting the cycle.
References
Barbara, J. D., Mark, D. H., Helen, B., Neil J. S. (2020). Perspective: Childhood Obesity Requires New Strategies for Prevention, Advances in Nutrition , DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmaa040 .
Forgione, N., Deed, G., Kilov, G. & Rigas G. (2018). Managing Obesity in Primary Care: Breaking Down the Barriers. Advances in Therapy 35, 191–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12325-017-0656-y
Russell, C. G., & Russell, A. (2019). A biopsychosocial approach to processes and pathways in the development of overweight and obesity in childhood: Insights from developmental theory and research. Obesity reviews: an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity , 20 (5), 725–749. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12838
Yoshida, Y., & Simoes, E. J. (2018). Sugar-Sweetened Beverage, Obesity, and Type 2 Diabetes in Children and Adolescents: Policies, Taxation, and Programs. Current diabetes reports , 18 (6), 31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11892-018-1004-6
