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Volume 9
Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
ISSN: 2165-7904
JOINT EVENT
Childhood Obesity 2019
Diabetes Conference 2019
March 18-19, 2019
&
3
rd
World Congress on
Diabetes and Obesity
12
th
International Conferences on
Childhood Obesity and Nutrition
March 18-19, 2019 | Rome, Italy
Underestimation of weight status in children and adolescent aged 0-19 years old: A systematic review and
meta analysis
Abrar Alshahrani
University of Nottingham, UK
Introduction:
It is widely recognised that obesity in childhood is aworldwide public health issue. For any intervention,
the first step is to identify overweight status which problematizes the child’s current weight to legitimises action.
This involves all those in the therapeutic triad: children themselves, parents and healthcare professionals. In policy
and health promotion, it is generally accepted that a significant barrier to intervention is that parents (caregivers)
of children with obesity underestimate their child’s weight status Furthermore, research has shown that healthcare
professionals may be also be underestimating. The aim of this study is to systematically identify and critically evaluate
relevant research to investigate the prevalence of, and factors associated with, underestimation of children’s weight
status.
Methods:
Abstracts published between 2000 to 2017 were included, and where identified using the following search
engines: CINAHL, EMBASE, PUBMED, and Psych-Info. References of relevant articles were hand-searched for
additional studies and the “Related Articles” and “Cited by” functions in search databases were also used. Both
qualitative and quantitative research that assessed caregivers, children and healthcare professional’s perceptions of
children’s weight using Likert scale questions, classification into weight categories, pictorial methods, or reporting of
height and weight, and were then compared with documented standards for defining overweight for example (IOTF,
CDC) based on anthropometric measurements were included. Publication language had no bearing on the nature of
the included studies, nor did the publication location. In the meta-analysis, pooled effect sizes were calculated using
random-effects model.
Results:
A total of 87 articles were included. In the quantitative studies, the random effect sizes revealed that 55%
(95% confidence interval 49%–61%) of (caregivers) and children underestimated their degree of overweight.
HCPs shared this misperception (but limited studies prevented meta-analysis). Furthermore, underestimation was
positively associated with a number of factors such as: child’s age, gender (male), current BMI and parental weight
status, education and ethnicity. In the qualitative studies, parents commonly describe their children in terms other
than obese such as “big boned,” “thick, “and “solid”, and demonstrated a strong desire to avoid labelling their child
with medical terminology.
Conclusion:
This review clearly demonstrates that underestimation of child weight status is endemic. Furthermore,
underestimation was positively associated with a number of factors such as: child’s age, gender (male), current BMI
and parental weight status, education and ethnicity.
J Obes Weight Loss Ther 2019, Volume 9
DOI: 10.4172/2165-7904-C1-091