School-based obesity prevention interventions: practicalities and considerations.

Pediatric obesity continues to be a major public health concern. Once established it is difficult to treat, therefore well-designed and evaluated prevention interventions are vitally important. Schools have an important role in the prevention of childhood obesity, however, their involvement can be limited by a number of constraints and barriers, which need to be considered when designing interventions.

Benchmarking government action for obesity prevention--an innovative advocacy strategy.

Background: Successful obesity prevention will require a leading role for governments, but internationally they have been slow to act. League tables of benchmark indicators of action can be a valuable advocacy and evaluation tool.

Objective: To develop a benchmarking tool for government action on obesity prevention, implement it across Australian jurisdictions and to publicly award the best and worst performers.

Large reductions in child overweight and obesity in intervention and comparison communities 3 years after a community project.

What Is Already Known About This Subject: Childhood obesity has been increasing over decades and scalable, population-wide solutions are urgently needed to reverse this trend. Evidence is emerging that community-based approaches can reduce unhealthy weight gain in children. In some countries, such as Australia, the prevalence of childhood obesity appears to be flattening, suggesting that some population-wide changes may be underway.

Biopsychosocial correlates of weight status perception in Australian adolescents.

This study examined the utility of the biopsychosocial model to predict accuracy of weight status perception among Australian adolescents. The factors included in this framework were: age, gender, and BMI-z (biological factors); satisfaction with body weight and shape (psychological factors); socioeconomic status, peer weight (social factors). Cross-sectional data, including measured height and weight, and self-reported weight status, was obtained from 2954 adolescents (mean age=14.

Inconsistent associations between sweet drink intake and 2-year change in BMI among Victorian children and adolescents.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine whether baseline (T1) or 2-year change in sweet drink intake in children and adolescents was associated with age- and gender-standardized body mass index (BMIz) at time two (T2), 2 years later.

Methods: Data on 1465 children and adolescents from the comparison groups of two quasi-experimental intervention studies from Victoria, Australia were analysed. At two time points between 2003 and 2008 (mean interval: 2.