New research presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Maastricht, the Netherlands (4-7 May), has found that many parents attending commercial weight management programmes would be happy for their child, if overweight, to also receive support to reach a healthier weight.
Latest figures show that 14.4 per cent of children aged four to five in England and 25.5 per cent of ten to 11-year-olds are living with obesity. Obesity rates in both groups increased by around 4.5 percentage points1 between 2019-20 and 2020-21 – the highest annual rise since the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) began.
Some local authorities in England run free weight management programmes for children. Children can be referred by their GP, other health professionals, the school, the NCMP or by self-referral, depending on where they live.
These programmes, however, are not available in all parts of England, and struggle to recruit, engage and retain members, as well as achieve a clinically significant improvement in weight status.
Dr Mears, a Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Bristol's Centre for Academic Primary Care, said: "We know that parents living with obesity are more likely to have children with obesity and so we decided to look at whether it would be feasible to recruit children through parents attending commercial weight management classes.
"We also decided to focus on this group because we felt that the point at which a parent decides to take steps to reach a healthier weight for themselves might represent a good opportunity to address weight concerns in any other members of the family.
"If the whole family make changes together to reach or maintain a healthier weight, this may be more effective than one family member tackling their weight alone."
