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Volume 6: No. 3, July 2009
About This Image
As Guest Editor Terry Huang argues, “Effective or sustainable
prevention strategies for obesity, particularly in youths, have been
elusive since the recognition of obesity as a major public health issue
2 decades ago.” This issue of Preventing Chronic Disease looks at
a multilevel obesity model. Behavioral economics suggests that powerful
biological and contextual forces make following the usual recommendations of diet
and exercise difficult for the individual. Huang and others in this
issue frame obesity as a complex system in which behavior is affected by
multiple individual-level factors and socioenvironmental factors (ie,
factors related to the food, physical, cultural, or economic environment
that enable or constrain human behavior). From the individual
level to the international level, and with sectors of influence spanning
education, agriculture, transportation, urban developments, and media,
in addition to the health sector, Huang and his colleagues stress the
need for research that cuts across this dynamic landscape.
In this issue we also have a collection of essays from a group of experts
in anthropology, law, epidemiology, ethics, and social networking sharing
their diverse perspectives on preventing childhood obesity. The articles,
coordinated by Donna Stroup, highlight ideas generated at the Symposium on
Epidemiologic, Ethical, and Anthropologic Issues in Childhood Overweight and
Obesity, held in 2008 at Saint George’s University in Grenada.
Kristen Immoor’s inspiration for this cover draws on ideas of kids and
summertime, focusing on technology that influences the way youths socialize,
eat, and play. Immoor says, “As neighborhoods become less walkable and traffic becomes
more dense, as unhealthy snacks proliferate, as toys become tied to
computers and television, and virtual socialization via chat, email, and SMS
[short message service]
supplants face-to-face communication, it becomes an increasingly complicated
task to navigate a child through the maze of choices that lead to good
health.” For the cover she illustrates the joyful essence of active,
self-directed children’s play superimposed against a maze of environmental
factors that influence youth health.
Cover created by Kristen Immoor
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