Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/healthy-children-healthy-lives/5024786/
This article is part one of a two-part series. Watch for the second article in the July/August issue of Exchange.
Recently I read an article that stated that half of the adults in the United States have heart disease. As a child development director and professor, it made me wonder about young children’s health. As professionals, are we doing enough to help children grow up to be healthy adults? Research shows a globally increasing rate of obesity in children, adolescents and adults. Approximately 33 percent of children in the United States are overweight or obese and obesity rates in children have more than tripled over the past three decades (CDC, 2015). (Obesity is defined as having excess body fat. Body mass index is a widely used screening tool for measuring obesity. BMI is a person’s weight divided by the square of a person’s height. Scientists have found that BMI is a readily understood calculation of body fat for both clinicians and individuals. Measuring height and weight is easier and less expensive than other methods for assessing weight status (CDC, 2015).)
The World Health Organization considers childhood obesity one of the most serious health challenges of the 21st century (WHO, ...