Australian Medical Student Journal20

In many countries the level of childhood obesity is rising. [2] Whilst the popular press have painted Australia as being in a similar situaƟ on, research has failed to idenƟ fy signifi cant increases in the level of childhood obesity since 1997, and in fact, recent data suggests a small decrease. [2,3] Nonetheless, an esƟ mated four to nine percent of school-aged children are obese. [1,4] Consequently, the Australian government have pledged to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity. [5] In this review, arƟ cles defi ned Body Mass Index (BMI) by dividing weight (in kilograms) by the square of the height (in metres). [1] BMI was then compared to age- and gender-specifi c internaƟ onal set points. [6] Obesity was defi ned as children who had a BMI ш 95 % of children with the same age and gender. [6] The subjects of this review, Australian school-aged children, were defi ned as those aged 4 to 18 years in order to include most children from preschool to the compleƟ on of secondary school throughout Australia. As evidence suggests that obese individuals have signifi cantly worse outcomes than overweight children, this review focused on obesity rather than overweight and obese individuals. [1] The aim of this arƟ cle was to examine the recent Australian literature on childhood obesity management strategies