Obesity in children, adolescents the focus of new IOM report

The study recommends a multipronged effort by communities, government, schools, families, industry and health care to halt the ongoing march to obesity.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 18, 2004.

Washington -- A laundry list of diseases that generally don't appear until adulthood are starting to be seen in young children who are overweight. Primary care physicians fear that they might not be equipped to handle this new onslaught.

"Many of us are scared about what will happen to children's health, because obesity affects almost every organ in the body," said Thomas N. Robinson, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif.

"We are looking at adult chronic diseases starting to enter into the teen years and even childhood," he said.

Dr. Robinson spoke at a Sept. 30 briefing on a new Institute of Medicine report, "Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance." He served on the panel that produced the report in response to a request from Congress.

Obesity among children and adults is causing concern worldwide because of its drastic health consequences. During the past 30 years, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled for preschool children and adolescents and more than tripled for children ages 6 to 11. Approximately 9 million American children older than age 6 are now considered obese.

"The great health advances made possible by genetics and other biomedical discoveries could be offset by the burden of illness, disability and death caused by too many people eating too much and moving too little over their lifetimes," said panel Chair Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president for Academic Health Affairs at Emory University in Atlanta, and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.