Policy vital in combating overweight and obesity in children

National Obesity Strategy an important step towards preventing childhood obesity but general practice needs to be supported in achieving its goals.

The AMA’s journal—the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA)—this week includes an Insight+ article looking at the National Obesity Strategy and how such a policy could support general practice to prevent childhood obesity in Australia.

Overweight and obesity have become the second-biggest modifiable chronic disease burden in Australia, after tobacco. Overweight and obesity in Australian children is prevalent, and prevalence rises with increasing age such that almost one in three children live with overweight and obesity by adolescence. Environmental factors are a causal factor along with biology.

In the article ‘Leveraging policy to prevent childhood obesity in general practice’ the authors consider the importance of public health policy in shaping or guiding clinical practice, and point to the demonstrative successes of policies such as the now-defunct Health Kids Check in enabling preventative healthcare.

They conclude the National Obesity Strategy, and its goals including the reduction of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents by 5% or more by 2030, is an important opportunity for change in Australia. While the ‘targets are aspirational and require significant action across many aspects of society’, the development of the Strategy ‘signals recognition of obesity as a policy priority and willingness at both state/territory and federal political levels to address this’.