Too early to ditch the campaign

doi:10.1136/bmj.39374.433356.BE

BMJ 2007;335:841 (27 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39374.433356.BE

Letters

Preventing childhood obesity

Too early to ditch the campaign

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We believe that James et al's conclusion that an interventionto reduce children's consumption of carbonated drinks and prevalenceof overweight was not effective two years after completion¹is not warranted for two reasons.

Firstly, they base their conclusions on the proportion of overweightchildren, which was significantly different between the twogroups at 12 months, but not at three years. However, averagevalues of body mass index (BMI), Z score, and waist circumferencewould be better outcome measures.² ³

Changes in BMI, Z score, and waist circumference moved towardssignificance. Thus, the intervention did not have a significanteffect on overweight after 12 months, but it was moving in theright direction.

If the children continued to consume fewer carbonated drinksas a result of the intervention, they would put on less weighteach year. James et al should measure the children's BMIs ina few years—they may find the . . . [Full text of this article]

J Lennert Veerman, research fellow, Jan J Barendregt, associate professor epidemiological modelling

UQ School of Population Health, Herston, QLD 4030, Australia

l.veerman@uq.edu.au

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

Technorati What's this?

Preventing childhood obesity: two year follow-up results from the Christchurch obesity prevention programme in schools (CHOPPS): Janet James, Peter Thomas, and David Kerr
BMJ 2007 335: 762. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]