Though many studies have examined the level of physician obesity prevention counseling among the general population, little is known about how homeless patients are advised about healthy eating and physical activity by their health care provider. The homeless are an at-risk population with whom physicians and other health professionals can play a…

A growing number of authors recognise the increasing expectations placed on young women as the vanguard of economic, social and cultural change. This paper explores how these imaginings have come to bear upon young women's bodies, as part of a special issue on pedagogical responses to the changing position of girls and young women. In examining…

The childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity rates are rising at an alarming rate. Numerous individual, family, community, and social factors contribute to overweight and obesity in children and are explored. If left unaddressed, the epidemic of childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity may lead to amplified problems for individual…

This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are relevant for a behavior, condition, or social group. Learning about genetic attributions for various human conditions leads to a particular set of thoughts…

This study compares the motor skills and physical fitness of school-age children (6-12 years) with visual impairments (VI; n = 60) and sighted children (n = 60). The relationships between the performance parameters and the children's body composition are investigated as well as the role of the severity of the impairment. The degree of VI did not…

Physical activity is essential to promote children's health and well-being. Increased sedentary behavior in children is a factor contributing to the escalation in childhood obesity in the general population. Clinical conditions, particularly physical disabilities, which reduce physical activity, may also lead to a higher risk of being overweight…

School nurses play an important role in identifying students who are at risk for Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Few studies have screened Caucasian students, and none have targeted rural, low-income, elementary children. The five noninvasive risk factors used for this study were family history, high body mass index (BMI) for age/sex,…

For more than a decade, researchers, and increasingly the public, have focused on childhood overweight as a personal and public health problem. As the number of children who are overweight has continued to grow, consensus has emerged that schools, as the places where children spend much of their time, have a critical role to play in reversing this…