A study released this week by San Diego County’s Childhood Obesity Initiative (COI) shows alarming statistics, including the struggles of childhood obesity in disadvantaged communities.
According to the first-ever “State of Childhood Obesity” report, there are wide disparities in childhood obesity rates in San Diego County by both race/ethnicity and economic disadvantage.
One in five students who come from low-income families struggles with obesity, per the study. Rates of childhood obesity are twice as high for Hispanic and low-income children.
More than one-third – or 34 percent – of children in fifth, seventh and ninth grades at San Diego’s public schools were declared overweight or obese in 2015.
One of the issues, according to the COI, is the accessibility of fast food chains in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
“In many of our most disadvantaged neighborhoods, it’s hard to eat healthy, explained Dr. Natalie Muth, M.D., of Children’s Primary Care Medical Group. “It’s hard to have access to those affordable, healthy foods and really easy to do the opposite.”
In the last 30 years, childhood obesity rates in San Diego County have doubled and quadrupled in teenagers alone.
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Muth said some of the problems can be tackled directly on school grounds.
“Physical activities have been maneuvered out of the day of children’s lives – out of the school day,” she said.
Another culprit may be the choices available at schools and around cities.
“Very few of our schools or cities have any policy around healthy beverages,” Muth added.
The report said there’s a need for improvement for more school districts and city governments to enact policies to support access to healthy beverages.
An alternative could be serving water bottles at lunch instead of chocolate milk, suggests Miguel Angel Molina, a junior at Kearny Mesa High School and healthy community youth advocate.
“Include the youth’s opinion on what the youth wants to eat,” he added.
Molina has personally taken on the issue of childhood obesity, working with children at a local elementary school near his Valencia Park community.
The teenager said he joined the COI to help raise awareness on the issue.
Despite the findings in the study, which focused on the 2014-2015 school year, local efforts to combat childhood obesity did show some progress over the decade prior. The COI said that between 2005 and 2010, overall obesity rates in San Diego County decreased by 4 percent.
The COI said current efforts to battle the obesity epidemic locally include 16 out of 18 cities in San Diego County adopting policies to promote physical activity and 33 out of 42 school districts now conducting farm-to-school activities. The rate of in-hospital breastfeeding – an early first defense against obesity – is at 80 percent.
The release of the report coincides with the national 9th Biennial Childhood Obesity Conference in San Diego this week, which brings together 1,600 health experts.
The COI hopes that by releasing these findings, agencies in the community will work together to reduce obesity rates.
