Effects of the Head Start Program on Socioecological Obesogenic Factors in American Children.

Taeeung Kim,Nam-Gyeong Gim,Chang-Yong Jang,Minju Kim

doi:10.3390/ijerph18094779

Abstract

Head Start is a nationwide developmental program for low-income families. This study aimed to investigate the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as their quality of life with respect to socioecological obesogenic factors. This cross-sectional study employed the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K) in which the data were collected in 2007 and analyzed in 2019. Propensity-score matching analysis was performed to examine the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as the quality of life, controlling for socioecological obesogenic factors. A total of 3753 children (representing 1,284,209 at the population level) were recruited in this study (mean age: 13.69 years; girls: 49.42%). In the final matched model, the program did not have a statistically significant effect on children’s obesity. Fewer African American children participated in school-sponsored activities, perceived themselves as overweight, lived in a household with fewer family members, had less strict TV regulations, and were more likely to be overweight than their counterparts. Outcomes suggest that multiple dimensions of sociological obesogenic factors including individual, parental, familial, and community support factors affect the weight of children from low-income families and should be considered when establishing behavioral and policy interventions to thwart the childhood obesity epidemic.

Highlights

IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
The data for this study were obtained from the Early Childhood Longitudinal StudyKindergarten cohort (ECLS-K), which followed children from kindergarten to fifth grade (Table 1)
This study examined the effects of the Head Start program on children’s BMI status and their quality of life in terms of socioecological obesogenic factors

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. To prevent and defer obesity during childhood, and later in the adult life, it is necessary to understand the complexities and opacities of obesity and related behaviors in order to develop more effective and efficient anti-obesity interventions. In the last two decades, given the scope of the issue, many city- and state-level obesity-prevention efforts and campaigns have been proposed and enacted, encompassing the most successful legislation and laws on both childhood obesity and obesity in adults [1,2,3,4]. More than one-third of the adults in the United States (U.S.), representing over 72 million people, are overweight and/or obese [5,6] and children show a similar trend

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