In this era of increasing accountability and high-stakes testing in schools, a serious paradox has surfaced. Children are becoming overweight at an alarming rate, and mounting evidence points to a relationship between obesity and poor school performance. Ironically, pressure to improve children's academic achievement has led many schools to adopt…

Objective: To investigate New Zealand children's understandings of "health". Design: Secondary analysis of student responses to a task called "Being Healthy" in New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project. Setting: Year 4 (8-9 year-old) and Year 8 (12-13 year-old) students who took part in New Zealand's National…

Background: The School Physical Activity and Nutrition (SPAN) questionnaire was developed as a surveillance instrument to measure physical activity, nutrition attitudes, and dietary and physical activity behaviors in children and adolescents. The SPAN questionnaire has 2 versions. Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate the validity of…

Objective and Participants: The authors investigated the effect of physical activity (PA), fruit and vegetable intake, and alcohol use on 6-month weight change in 193 college freshmen (78.8% white, 88.2% women, 94.5% on a meal plan). Methods: The authors administered a Web-based survey in fall 2002 (baseline) and spring 2003 (follow-up). Results:…

Whether in health, in education, or in material well-being, some children will always fall behind the average. The critical question is -- how far behind? Is there a point beyond which falling behind is not inevitable but policy susceptible, not unavoidable but unacceptable, not inequality but inequity? There are no widely agreed theoretical…

Background: This study assessed parent reactions to school-based body mass index (BMI) screening. Methods: After a K-8 BMI screening program, parents were sent a letter detailing their child's BMI results. Approximately 50 parents were randomly selected for interview from each of 4 child weight-classification groups (overweight, at risk of…

One-third of the population of US children is considered obese and two-thirds of the adult population falls into the same category. These figures have tripled over the last 30 years. This demonstrates that the existing strategies to combat obesity do not work and it is time to look for alternatives. The recommendation is to turn the problem into a…

It is obviously possible to argue that education is always an arm of social policy. However, there are just as surely degrees of directness between the agendas of noneducational authorities and what happens in school and university classrooms. This article considers what appears to be a direct example of a particular public policy agenda, the…

We review the literature on the prevalence and conditions resulting in overweight and obesity in people with intellectual disability (ID), followed by obesity treatment research with typically developing children and adaptations for children with ID. In addition to proposing directions for future research and practice, we report a comprehensive…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine specific risk factors associated with obesity among African American, Hispanic and Caucasian children. Design: This is a cross-sectional study conducted on 1076 fifth grade children from 17 elementary schools at Fort Worth, Texas. Data were collected through questionnaires and physical…

As more U.S. children grow up in Latino families, understanding how social class, culture, and environment influence feeding practices is key to preventing obesity. The authors conducted six focus groups and 20 in-depth interviews among immigrant, low-income Latina mothers in the Northeast United States and classified 17 emergent themes from…

Background: Despite the growing number of school-based interventions designed to reduce childhood obesity or otherwise promote health, no models or materials were found for Jewish schools. The current study describes an effort within a Jewish school system in Chicago to create, implement, and evaluate a school-based intervention tailored to the…

This review examined 117 research articles using a policy framework generated in previous research. Findings include: students are experiencing both food insecurity and an "epidemic of obesity"; policymakers remain focused on achievement; provinces address nutrition in isolation; poverty is a significant contributor; restriction of food…

This article examines the obesity, health, and physical activity discourses of the past 35 years in the context of the United States with particular reference to five social sectors: the biomedical domain; the popular media; nonprofit foundations, centers and agencies; various national and multinational corporations; and government at all levels.…

Purpose: To examine older adults' perceptions of the link between physical activity (PA) and nutrition to the maintenance of cognitive health. Design and Methods: Forty-two focus groups (FGs) were conducted with 396 ethnically diverse (White, African American, American Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Hispanic) community-dwelling older adults. FGs…