Concerned your child may be gaining too much weight? Time to talk to your pediatrician.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wants pediatricians to take a more active role in their patients’ weight management, so they can recognize the warning signs for children at risk for obesity and take preventive steps early.
According to new guidelines published this summer, the AAP believes prevention is more effective than treatment and reversing behavior later.
A culture shift
Dr. John La Count, a pediatrician with St. Elizabeth Physicians’ Florence office, agrees. In fact, he thinks it’s one more step forward in a cultural shift toward better education around childhood obesity.
“Prevention is always the goal with any illness,” he said, “but it takes a long time to change the culture. I think we’re coming to the top of the mountain ““ we’re starting to see people’s perceptions changing ““ but we may not have reached the peak yet.”
Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report a more than doubling in the instances of childhood obesity among children in the past 30 years, estimating that the percentage of children ages 6 to 11 in the United States who were obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 18 percent in 2012.
La Count said the rate of childhood obesity in our region is still increasing, although he does note the rate is slowing.
How to help your child stay healthy
To start tracking a child’s weight early, the AAP recommends pediatricians use growth charts for children from birth through age two, and the CDC’s Body Mass Index charts for older toddlers and children.
It also urges pediatricians to look for “prenatal risk factors” that can begin even before a child is born. Those factors include a parent’s obesity or a mother who smokes during pregnancy. Babies who are never breastfed, don’t sleep enough and gain weight rapidly also are at an increased risk.
In addition, the AAP suggests pediatricians advise at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day for their patients, set a two-hour-per-day limit on “screen time,” provide parents with practical information on how to obtain nutritious foods for their children, and discourage them from buying sweetened beverages, sweets and high-calorie snacks.
Telling parents to buy their children more nutritious food, which often costs more, is one recommendation that La Count said is easier said than done.
“Many people have limited budgets, and they spend their money on less-than-appropriate food choices,” he said. “But I can’t really argue with that when they don’t have the budget for it.”
Also, La Count is concerned about the fact that childhood obesity isn’t recognized as a medical condition by most health insurance plans and, therefore, isn’t covered unless a child develops complications from it.
“For adults, if their BMI is above 30, their health plans are required to provide coverage,” he said. “It’s not the same way for children, and it becomes very difficult and very frustrating when we want to obtain services for them ““ services that can be scarce in terms of availability ““ and we can’t. We need to level the playing field for kids.”
