Promotion of a Healthy Weight and Lifestyle among Children: The ‘Be Active, Eat Right’ Study

Overweight and obesity among children has become a public health issue. This thesis aimed to describe interventions promoting a healthy weight and lifestyle among children and provide insight in elements that may be related to intervention improvement. Health care has an important role in early detection of overweight and obesity among children. The prevention protocol is an intervention that can be implemented in the youth health care setting. The in this thesis described evaluation of the prevention protocol showed limited effects of the intervention on health behaviors and BMI of the children. However, the prevention protocol may be used to create awareness of the child’s overweight among parents and motivate them to change health behavior. The prevention protocol offers the opportunity to discuss potential negative health outcomes such as insecure feelings the child may be experiencing, which was shown in two studies in this thesis. Also, parents may be assisted in learning skills to promote healthy behavior of the child and to create a healthy home environment. Individual focused interventions such as the prevention protocol, should be implemented in combination with interventions targeting the general population. A study in this thesis showed that interventions among the general population of children can help decrease sedentary behavior and BMI. A local integrated approach to prevent and care for children with overweight and obesity is recommended; care providers have working arrangements with regard to detection, care and follow-up of children with overweight and obesity and all health care professionals are committed to providing local prevention and care. This integrated approach will promote sustainable health behavior change and the development of a healthy lifestyle among children and their families.