Adolescent obesity facts

Abstract

Obesity prevalence through childhood and adolescence has been classified as a serious public health problem noting a worldwide increase in the prevalence of overweight/obesity and therefore different etiologically related diseases. In developed countries, current prevalence levels reach 23.8% in boys and 22.6% in girls, with Portugal showing high prevalence values like other southern European and the Mediterranean countries (WHO, 2017). Not only for the health of the present generation of young adolescents but also for future adult’s populations, the need to find better multi-sectoral strategies for current public policies appears to be fundamental. Although it is not the main scope of this text, it will be important, in due course, to analyse the effectiveness of the current inter-sectoral health policies applied in some countries, although it is clear that no country until now has been able to definitively reverse this phenomenon. Our main purpose of this research note is to present the preliminary results of the Causes4adolescentObsesity (C4AO) project, which included a sample of 603 students from the northern and central interior region of Portugal.