A new study in Lancet suggests that we are overdue for fresh thinking about early childhood obesity prevention. This is because programs built upon a premise of engaging parents in the effort turn out to be ineffective.
The conclusions of this research are stark:
“This study is the most comprehensive individual participant data meta-analysis in the field to date. Using rigorous, gold-standard methods, we found no evidence that parent-focused obesity prevention interventions affect child BMI Z score at age 24 months (or within 6 months either side) or most of our secondary outcomes. Our findings indicate that existing early, behavioural, parent-focused interventions alone are insufficient to address childhood obesity.
“This evidence highlights a need to re-think childhood obesity prevention approaches.”
With this knowledge in hand, confident assertions that “we know what works” should stop.
Not Helping
The prevailing thought in early childhood obesity prevention has long been that engaging parents is essential. In a vintage (2007) perspective for NEJM, a prominent childhood obesity researcher opined:
“Parents must take responsibility for their children’s welfare by providing high-quality food, limiting television viewing, and modeling a healthful lifestyle.”
Taking this thought to an extreme in JAMA, Lindsey Murtagh and David Ludwig suggested that “placement into foster care in carefully selected situations” was something to consider for “life-threatening childhood obesity.”
It is precisely that kind of thinking that subjects parents of children with obesity to well-documented stigma. It does not help. More often, it causes anguish.
The lead author of the new study in Lancet, Kylie Hunter, offers perspective:
“Obesity is in large part driven by environmental and socio-economic factors that individuals are unable to change. Parents play a vital role, but our study highlights that they cannot be expected to reduce childhood obesity levels alone.”
Indeed, we need fresh thinking about early childhood obesity prevention.
Click here for the new paper in Lancet, here, here, and here for further reporting on it. For perspective on the stigmatization of parents, click here.
Mother with Child, painting by Mikuláš Galanda / Wikimedia Commons
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September 15, 2025 at 1:06 pm, Allen Browne said:
Actually the lead author needs to learn about the physiology of the disease of obesity. Parents are basically helpless to change that unhealthy physiology without utilizing the latest tools of treating obesity in a multi-disciplinary fashion or prevent that unhealthy physiology from developing because we don’t really understand why one child gets the disease and another (perhaps even a sib or neighbor) doesn’t get it. Hopefully this report will stir some new ways of looking at prevention.
Allen