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Childhood overweight: a contextual model and recommendations for future research
1Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 110 Henderson Building South, University Park, PA 16802, USA. kdavison@psu.edu
Insights
Childhood overweight has doubled, driven by complex factors across family, school, and community environments. Understanding these interconnected influences using Ecological Systems Theory (EST) is crucial for effective interventions.
Area of Science:
- Pediatrics
- Public Health
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Childhood overweight prevalence has doubled in two decades, raising significant health and psychological concerns.
- The development of childhood overweight is influenced by a complex interplay of factors across multiple environmental contexts.
- Ecological Systems Theory (EST) provides a framework for understanding these multifaceted influences on child development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review research on childhood overweight predictors using Ecological Systems Theory (EST) as a framework.
- To examine child characteristics (diet, physical activity, sedentary behavior) and their risk for overweight.
- To consider the impact of familial, school, community, and societal environments on childhood overweight.
Main Methods:
- Systematic review of existing research on childhood overweight predictors.
- Application of Ecological Systems Theory (EST) to categorize and analyze influencing factors.
- Synthesis of findings related to child-specific behaviors and broader environmental contexts.
Main Results:
- Child characteristics like diet, physical activity, and sedentary behavior are key predictors of overweight.
- Familial, school, community, and societal environments significantly influence these child characteristics and overweight risk.
- Interactions between individual behaviors and environmental contexts are critical in the development of childhood overweight.
Conclusions:
- Future research must adopt a broader contextual approach, utilizing frameworks like EST, to understand and combat childhood overweight.
- Interventions need to address the complex interplay of individual behaviors and environmental factors.
- A comprehensive, systems-based approach is essential for developing effective strategies against childhood overweight.
Abstract:
The prevalence of overweight among children has doubled within the past two decades. Increases in the rate of childhood overweight are of particular concern due to the negative health and psychological effects noted among overweight children. As shown by previous research, the development of childhood overweight involves a complex set of factors from multiple contexts that interact with each other to place a child at risk of overweight. This multifaceted system can be conceptualized using Ecological Systems Theory (EST). EST highlights the importance of considering the context(s), or ecological niche, in which a person is located in order to understand the emergence of a particular characteristic. In the case of a child, the ecological niche includes the family and the school, which are in turn embedded in larger social contexts including the community and society at large. In this review, EST is used as a framework with which to summarize research assessing predictors of childhood overweight. Specifically, child characteristics that place children at risk of the development of overweight (including dietary intake, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour) will be reviewed while taking into consideration the influence of the familial environment, the school environment, and the community and larger social environments. It is concluded that future research needs to adopt a broader contextual approach in order to understand and intervene against the processes leading to the development of overweight among children and that the use of theories or paradigms such as EST will facilitate developing and testing models of causal processes.