Editorial: National health offensive

Thursday, July 20, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

It would seem that as obesity rates increase among America's children, the stigma of talking to their parents about the problem would slowly disappear.

But according to a recent story by the Washington Post, children's doctors say that isn't true, and many doctors still find it difficult to tell parents that their children are overweight.

Childhood obesity is a well-publicized problem with numbers that have become all too familiar. Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show that 7 percent of children and 5 percent of teens were overweight in 1980. Today those figures are 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

Physicians at the National Children's Medical Center told the Post of treating a 9-year-old who had suffered a heart attack, of performing gastric bypass surgeries on schoolchildren and of a child whose body mass index was 52 - the same as that of a 5-foot-6 adult who weighs 322 pounds.

Doctors said that some parents become angry when told their children are overweight. Medical appointments are scheduled so tightly, and doctors must cover so many topics in a few minutes, that the complex problem of obesity often can't be adequately addressed. Weight loss may require a trial-and-error approach, and most insurance companies don't cover follow-up appointments that are for obesity alone, the Post reports.

Add to these challenges a fast-food mentality and cultural differences in how parents view weight - some cultures consider chubby children to be healthy and thin ones unhealthy - and it is a prescription for disastrous lifelong health problems for an entire generation.

Our approaches must change. Parents and children need to hear from doctors that being overweight is more than a cosmetic issue. Insurance companies must start seeing obesity as the disease that it is and cover the appointments and programs that can help children before they face such drastic measures as gastric bypass surgery. Schools should allocate much more time for physical education and recess. Eating right and exercising are no longer merely good ideas. They are lifesavers.