The psychosocial aspects of overweight and obesity in very young and pre-school children in the context of selected sociodemographic indicators in the Czech Republic and in some others countries

Abstract

The authors of this study present the results of surveys in significant areas of social peda-gogy relating to both the prevention of overweight and obesity in children, and healthy lifestyle edu-cation. The psychosocial aspects of overweight and obesity in early age and preschool children are monitored in the context of selected socio-demographic indicators in the Czech Republic, Great Brit-ain, the USA, Australia, some European countries, Iran and China. The purpose of such oriented stud-ies is to find appropriate preventive, pedagogical or therapeutic interventions that could contribute to the elimination of risk factors in the particular societies. It turns out that the sociodemographic and psychosocial aspects of overweight and obesity in chil-dren (in terms of particular countries) cannot be always uniformly described and defined. Numerous psychosocial or sociodemographic characteristics were found when comparing different ethnic groups, the different age cohorts of parents or the different developmental stages of children, when comparing countries with various standards of living, or even just, when comparing different socio-economic strata within the same country. It also appears that the relationships identified by the be-low-mentioned researches don´t have a straight forward effect, but are also modified by the influ-ence of other variables. A common feature overweight and obesity in children in the majority of countries seems to be associated with significant social inequalities within a specific country. Accord-ing to some authors, one of the possible ways to fight overweight and obesity in children is to reduce the inequalities of the macroeconomic society

Keywords

• Children with overweight and obesity
• psychosocial factors
• preschool age
• early age