Most doctors silent over kids’ obesity
A new study by US researchers suggests that doctors and other health professionals are usually reticent to warn parents that their child is overweight.
University of North Carolina researchers found that less than a quarter of parents with overweight children recall a doctor ever telling them about the problem.
Dr. Eliana Perrin and colleagues discovered that only 22.4 percent of parents had received a warning from a health care provider.
Among parents of very obese children, 58 percent said they had received a warning from a doctor about the kid’s condition.
“Parents might be more motivated to follow healthy eating and activity advice if they knew their children were overweight, but very few parents of overweight children say they have ever heard that from their doctor,” said Dr. Perrin.
“Many pediatricians don’t worry until children are very overweight, or until they’re much older,” she added. “If we can notice a concerning trend early, we’re more likely to be able to do something about it.”
More parents, however, reported being told of their child’s weight later in the study, scientists wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
In 1999 the rate of warnings was 19.4 percent while it rose to 23.4 percent in 2004 and to 29.1 percent from 2007 to 2008.
“As health care providers, it’ s our job to screen for overweight and obesity and communicate those screening results in sensitive ways, and we are clearly either not doing it or not doing it in a way that families can hear or remember,” Perrin suggested. “While we’ve done better in recent years, clearly there’s more work to be done.”
Source: presstv.com
