As the CWI course is coming to an end, I am very happy to say that there is a glimmer of good news in the world of childhood obesity. This article As Childhood Obesity Improves, discusses how childhood obesity has begun to level off. There has been two decades of dramatic growth, so this is a huge improvement! Unfortunately, there is one downfall: this improvement seems to apply to only some kids, not all. Childhood obesity has been a huge problem in low-income families like I have discussed many times in previous posts. The problem is that the improvement is not really showing to be better in these low-income families. So a question now arises: "As Childhood Obesity improves, will kids in poverty be left behind?"
"A new study appearing in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics offers the latest evidence that less affluent children are faring worse when it comes to obesity. The study, which included a diverse group of nearly 37,000 Massachusetts children under age six, found that between 2004 and 2008 the obesity rate fell by 1.6 and 2.6 percentage points among boys and girls, respectively." As the researchers expected, the decline was more noticeable among children with non-Medicaid health insurance than those on Medicaid. This study was done in Massachusetts, not everywhere in the world so it does not necessarily mean that this is all over the United States. They say that it is still unclear if this pattern is occurring elsewhere.
"We should be cautious
about assuming that this trend found in one practice in eastern
Massachusetts generalizes to the entire U.S.," says John Cawley, Ph.D., a
professor of economics and co-director of the Institute on Health
Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities at Cornell University, in
Ithaca, New York.
Question: Do you think this study will be proven to be happening all over the United States? What do you think can be done to help the kids in poverty?
Bibliography
Harding, Anne. As childhood obesity improves,
will kids in poverty be left behind? 1 May 2012. 2 May 2012
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/01/health/childhood-obesity-poverty/index.html>.
