Association of key foods and beverages with obesity in Australian schoolchildren

Objective: To examine the pattern of intake of key foods and beverages of children aged 4&ndash;12 years and the association with weight status.Design and setting: A computer-assisted telephone interview was used to determine the intake of fruit, vegetables, packaged snacks, fast foods and sweetened drinks &lsquo;yesterday&rsquo; and &lsquo;usually&rsquo; as reported by parents/guardians of a representative sample of 2184 children from the Barwon South-Western region of Victoria, Australia.Results: Children who consumed .2&ndash;3, .3&ndash;4 and .4 servings of fruit juice/drinks &lsquo;yesterday&rsquo; were, respectively, 1.7 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2&ndash;2.2), 1.7 (95% CI 1.2&ndash;2.5) and 2.1 (95% CI 1.5&ndash;2.9) times more likely to be overweight/obese compared with those who had no servings of fruit juice/drink &lsquo;yesterday&rsquo;, adjusted for age, gender and socio-economic status (SES). Further, children who had $3 servingsof soft drink &lsquo;yesterday&rsquo; were 2.2 (95% CI 1.3&ndash;3.9) times more likely to beoverweight/obese compared with those who had no servings of soft drink &lsquo;yesterday&rsquo;, adjusted for age, gender and SES. In addition, children who &lsquo;usually&rsquo; drank fruit juice/drinks twice or more per day were 1.7 (95% CI 1.2&ndash;2.4) times more likely to be overweight/obese compared with those who drank these beverages once or less per week, adjusted for age, gender and SES. Although fast foods and packaged snacks were regularly eaten, there were no associations between weight status andconsumption of these foods.Conclusions: Intake of sweetened beverages was associated with overweight and obesity in this population of Australian schoolchildren and should be a target for intervention programmes aimed at preventing unhealthy weight gain in children.<br /

Increasing community capacity to prevent childhood obesity: challenges, lessons learned and results from the Romp & Chomp intervention

BackgroundObesity is a major public health issue; however, only limited evidence is available about effective ways to prevent obesity, particularly in early childhood. Romp &amp; Chomp was a community-wide obesity prevention intervention conducted in Geelong Australia with a target group of 12,000 children aged 0-5 years. The intervention had an environmental and capacity building focus and we have recently demonstrated that the prevalence of overweight/obesity was lower in intervention children, post-intervention. Capacity building is defined as the development of knowledge, skills, commitment, structures, systems and leadership to enable effective health promotion and the aim of this study was to determine if the capacity of the Geelong community, represented by key stakeholder organisations, to support healthy eating and physical activity for young children was increased after Romp &amp; Chomp.MethodsA mixed methods evaluation with three data sources was utilised. 1) Document analysis comprised assessment of the documented formative and intervention activities against a capacity building framework (five domains: Partnerships, Leadership, Resource Allocation, Workforce Development, and Organisational Development); 2) Thematic analysis of key informant interviews (n = 16); and 3) the quantitative Community Capacity Index Survey.ResultsDocument analysis showed that the majority of the capacity building activities addressed the Partnerships, Resource Allocation and Organisational Development domains of capacity building, with a lack of activity in the Leadership and Workforce Development domains. The thematic analysis revealed the establishment of sustainable partnerships, use of specialist advice, and integration of activities into ongoing formal training for early childhood workers. Complex issues also emerged from the key informant interviews regarding the challenges of limited funding, high staff turnover, changing governance structures, lack of high level leadership and unclear communication strategies. The Community Capacity Index provided further evidence that the project implementation network achieved a moderate level of capacity.ConclusionsRomp &amp; Chomp increased the capacity of organisations, settings and services in the Geelong community to support healthy eating and physical activity for young children. Despite this success there are important learnings from this mixed methods evaluation that should inform current and future community-based public health and health promotion initiatives.Trial Registration Number: ANZCTRN12607000374460<br /