ABSTRACT
The promotion of healthy growth patterns in childhood can reduce the risk of ill-health from obesity and other disorders in adulthood and reduce the social and physiological correlates of excess body weight in childhood. The present chapter considers both controlled and uncontrolled interventions to promote healthy growth. It finds the most common setting for controlled interventions are schools, where a degree of scientific validity can support the results. However, this has restricted the range of evidence available to policy makers, leading to concerns that other types of evidence should be utilized, including modeling, observational studies, and expert opinion.
Expert recommendations have emphasized population level measures including regulatory approaches and voluntary industry measures. Cost effectiveness modeling has indicated which of these might be most attractive to policy makers. In the last decade, national and international strategy documents have adopted a ‘systems-based’ approach in which healthy growth is an outcome of a number of complex and interacting systems influencing health behaviors.
The present chapter concludes with a discussion of emerging issues: the rising incidence of childhood obesity in low- and middle-income countries, the rising influence of electronic media on children's exposure to commercial marketing, the increasing evidence for the role of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals in raising obesity risk, and some lessons from the COVID-19 epidemic.
