Confronting child obesity in primary care

摘要

Obesity as a risk for chronic disease has been called an 'unfolding crisis' in these pages and a recent study identified a fourfold increase in children in England being admitted to hospital for obesity and related conditions in the past decade. We found that of these children three-quarters were not admitted for obesity itself, but for the management of related conditions including asthma, sleep apnoea and type II diabetes. The number of bariatric surgery procedures rose dramatically in 10 years in children as young as 13 years old. Systematic review evidence suggests worsened cardiovascular risk profiles in overweight and obese children and together these findings raise the worrying prospect that we are seeing these diseases manifest themselves earlier in the life course. Currently one in three children in England are overweight, one in five are obese and every agency: government, the food industry, schools, the health profession and the family has been called to arms to tackle the problem. Charged with health care for 98% of the nation's 10 million children, we consider what role GPs and primary care providers can play.