NCJ Number
247117
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 38 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2014 Pages: 768-775
Date Published
April 2014
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This study determined the prevalence and correlates of obesity among youth investigated for maltreatment in the United States.
Abstract
The study found that obesity prevalence (25 percent) among children and youth involved in maltreatment cases investigated by child protection agencies was higher than among children and youth in the general population (17 percent). The disproportionally high prevalence of obesity among investigated preschool and elementary school-aged children is of particular concern. Childhood onset of obesity increases the risk for adult obesity and for co-morbidities such as diabetes, cardiac disease, asthma, orthopedic complications, social stigma, and metabolic syndrome in adulthood. Overall obesity rates were significantly higher for boys than girls among the sample, which includes children and youth ages 2-17, which is consistent with national estimates. Obesity rates did not differ by race/ethnicity for investigated youth, but when disaggregated by age and sex, rates were not symmetrical across age groups and sex. Race/ethnic groups of children in the sample who had alarmingly high rates of childhood obesity included Hispanic boys ages 6 through 11 (42 percent) and 12-17 (36 percent) and White boys ages 2 through 5 (37 percent). Given these findings, three recommendations are offered. First, improve surveillance of basic weight-related health data on youth in the child welfare systems. Second, education on healthy lifestyle promotion should be incorporated into routine casework, residential, and foster caregiver training. Third, theoretically driven and empirically evaluated interventions that promote healthy lifestyle among foster-care youth could be developed. Study participants were drawn from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, a national probability study of 5,873 children ages birth to 17 years old who were under investigation for maltreatment in 2008. From weight reported by caregivers, researchers estimated obesity (weight-for-age). 3 tables and 53 references