Date of Award
January 2013
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Degree Name
Medical Doctor (MD)
Department
Medicine
First Advisor
Jeannette R. Ickovics
Subject Area(s)
Public health, Medicine
Abstract
Efforts to prevent and treat childhood obesity have had only modest results. Novel strategies are needed. The aims and hypotheses of this thesis are to: 1) Document the self-reported receipt of lifestyle counseling from physicians and other health care providers by BMI status. We hypothesize that despite recommendations for universal lifestyle counseling, few children will be counseled by their health care providers, though children who are obese will report receiving the most counseling. 2) Test the hypothesis that psychological resiliency (i.e., "shift and persist") protects low socioeconomic status children from obesity. Physical assessments and health surveys were collected from two school-based samples of children (N = 959 and N = 1,523). Multivariate logistic regression and multivariate linear regression were used to address aims one and two respectively. For lifestyle counseling, nearly one-quarter of healthy weight children received no counseling. Overweight children received counseling at rates similar to their healthy weight peers, while obese children were more likely to be counseled. As expected, among children low in resiliency, lower socioeconomic status was associated with significantly higher BMI z-scores (p < .05). However, among children high in resiliency, there was no association of socioeconomic status with BMI z-score (p = .16), suggesting that resiliency may be protective. Future research should to explore how best to leverage interventions we already know to be effective in fighting childhood obesity, such as lifestyle counseling, and also investigate novel means of approaching childhood obesity, including promoting psychological resiliency.
Recommended Citation
Kallem, Stacey, "Novel Strategies In The Prevention And Treatment Of Childhood Obesity: The Importance Of Lifestyle Counseling And Psychological Resiliency" (2013). Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library. 1808.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ymtdl/1808
Comments
This is an Open Access Thesis.