Eva Ruiz Verde I Sevilla, (EFE).- Childhood obesity is a problem with “multiple edges” and that requires a “complete” approach that begins even before pregnancy, “since the idea of having a child is made”, something of which “it is very important to make families aware”.
This was confirmed to EFE by Francisco Javier Aguilar, a pediatrician and director of the Comprehensive Childhood Obesity Plan of Andalusia (PIOBIN), a compendium of actions that is being reviewed by the Ministry of Health and Consumption to approve its update this year, since the Current text is from 2012.
For this, and with the participation of more than 40 experts, three lines of work have been marked out that include information and communication to the population, prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyle habits, and health care and information systems.
All in a community that, according to the latest data from the Aladino Study 2019, carried out by the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) among schoolchildren from 6 to 9 years old, has an obesity rate of an average of 20.4%. (18.9% in girls and 21.9% in boys) compared to 17.3% for the country as a whole (15% in girls and 19.4% in boys), which leads to having to tackle this problem as soon as possible . “In adulthood we are already late,” he says.
Pioneer project in the southern polygon
“Many of the actions are already aimed at controlling weight even before pregnancy is achieved, and of course during pregnancy,” says Aguilar, who adds that the body mass index of the pregnant mother before becoming pregnant is a very important risk factor for obesity.
The works to renew the comprehensive plan are carried out at the same time that a European project is launched in Andalusia that will be launched in the Polígono Sur in Seville under the name “Health4EUKids”, a joint action co-financed by the European Commission aimed at preventing obesity children, in which another six autonomous communities participate.
Although the methodology and how it will be carried out has yet to be defined, Aguilar details that it is about promoting good healthy living practices in a disadvantaged area where there is “the great tool” of the figure of the Commissioner, “a structure already created key to approach that reality” and do it from different areas.
And it is that, according to the director of PIOBIN, “there is no single key” to address childhood obesity, which has “multiple edges.”
“From the ease that families have to access parks and areas for sports, extracurricular classes, food, physical activity, sleep, emotional well-being…. It is a very complex problem”, says the expert, who adds that Health works in coordination with other ministries, such as Education or Agriculture, precisely for this reason.
Stigmatization to the “order of the day”
As a pediatrician, he points out that in the consultation an increase in the prevalence of excess weight has been detected since the covid-19 pandemic, a trend that has been dragging on “for years”, and warns of long-term repercussions , since practically half of the children who suffer from it maintain it in adult life “with the complications that it entails: from diabetes to cardiovascular risk to certain types of cancer.”
It also warns that families “always tend to underestimate the existence of overweight or obesity in their children”, which makes it difficult for them to deal with it and entails “a lot of work for health professionals to learn to approach these families with sufficient sensitivity” to make him see it
Aguilar details that this action has “a double aspect: that parents do not want to recognize it due to ignorance or downplaying it, or that they do it because stigmatization is the order of the day.”
Each case in consultation, he assures, is different, and varies greatly depending on the age of the child. “If you are 3 years old, the modification of lifestyle habits is in the hands of your parents, if you are 11, the messages in the consultation can be addressed to them, because they will make a large part of the decisions,” she says.
“There are many small keys that make no consultation the same, from their relationship with their parents to how they themselves talk about that excess weight,” insists the pediatrician, who is committed in any case to “being aware from a young age of how important are the habits of life”. EFE