Physical activity intervention at schools can help prevent childhood obesity: Study

A new Slovenian population-scaled, school-based study shows that by providing additional physical education lessons to young children is effective in preventing childhood obesity, according to findings published in Obesity journal.

The present study leverages a natural experiment that provided the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of Healthy Lifestyle, a real-world, population-based, longitudinal physical activity intervention on body mass index (BMI) in children aged 6-to-14 years.

Between 2011–2018, Healthy Lifestyle was a nationwide intervention introduced in 216 Slovenian schools with more than 34,000 participants compared with the same number of schools and non-participants. Generalized estimating equations were used to estimate the effects of differing levels of exposure to the intervention (i.e., from 1-5 years) on BMI in children with normal weight, overweight or obesity at baseline.

Results revealed that BMI was lower in the intervention group, irrespective of participation duration or baseline weight status. The difference in BMI increased with the program duration, with maximal effects seen after three-to-four years of participation, and was consistently larger for children with obesity, peaking at 1.4 kg/m2 for girls with obesity and peaking at 0.9 kg/m2 for boys with obesity. The program started to become effective at reversing obesity after three years, whereas the lowest numbers needed to treat were observed after five years.

Reference:

Gregor Starc et al,“Effectiveness of a Population-scaled, School-based Physical Activity Intervention for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity” ,Obesity