Experts say kids, teens should be screened for obesity quoting : wina

"You can't necessarily cure it."Grossman said weight management programs for youth are not as widely available as they are for adults. By Andrew M. Seaman(Reuters Health) – Children and teens should be screened for obesity at doctors' offices starting at age 6 and advised to attend intensive weight management programs if needed, according to a U.S.-government backed panel. The recommendation, from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), reinforces the panel's previous guidelines, according to its chairperson. Referring children and their families to comprehensive and intensive weight management programs, with 26 hours or more of contact with specialists over two to 12 months, resulted in weight loss, USPSTF researchers found. Also, some insurers may only pay for treatment for a limited amount of time, whereas "obesity is a chronic disease," he told Reuters Health.




The new recommendations, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., earned a "B" grade from the task force. The task force considered two medications that are sometimes used to help kids lose weight, orlistat and metformin. With obesity still rising among certain groups of kids, a government panel is renewing its advice that all children and adolescents ages 6 to 18 be screened for obesity. The task force acknowledged that some families would have "limited access" to programs like this, but it didn't dwell on this problem. The task force advises doctors to help their patients find a "comprehensive, intensive behavioral intervention." That's a fancy way of describing a weight-loss counseling program.

Children should be screened for obesity at age six

A government agency is calling for children to be screened for Obesity at doctors' offices starting at six years old. Officials are increasingly worried that obesity has become 'normalized' in Britain and the US because so many children are overweight. Obesity is a growing epidemic across the country as nearly a third of children are obese or overweight, and are five times more likely to be obese as adults. The US Preventive Services Task Force wants doctors to screen for obesity in children starting at six years oldThe obesity rate among US children in general is stable at about 17 percent but is still increasing among African-American girls and Hispanic boys, the USPSTF writes in JAMA. Children who were obese at the age of 10 were shown to have damaged arteries 25 years later - even if they lost weight in the intervening years.


collected by :Lucy William

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