Preventing childhood obesity in the UK, with a focus on South Asian children

We plan to develop a package of activities to prevent obesity among children. The activities will be tested among children aged 5 to 7 in primary schools in Birmingham.
Obesity is a growing global problem among children and adults. Its health consequences include increased risk of heart disease, cancers and diabetes. In the UK, people of South Asian (SA) origin are at particularly high risk, but this group have not been included in previous research. We know that targeting children is a good way of preventing the rising trend.
Previous research has had limited success, partly because less attention was paid to the planning process. Our study takes a new approach to planning, focusing on environmental factors and including children of SA background.
We will first gather information from people in schools and surrounding communities, and combine this with information from the scientific literature. Through this process we aim to define activities that the target community perceives to be effective, important and acceptable.
We will then test the package among children from four primary schools. We will assess the effects and refine the activities by comparing these children with children from other similar schools who did not have these activities.

Obesity is a risk factor for many chronic diseases and is an increasing problem. Prevention is best targeted at children. However, systematic reviews have found limited high quality data on the effectiveness of interventions tested. In the UK, the rapidly increasing South Asian (SA) population is at particular risk of obesity and its consequences. However, no previous intervention studies have targeted this population. The aim of this study is to develop an intervention which can later be used in a definitive RCT. We plan to undertake an environmental analysis to identify modifiable factors contributing to obesity, plan and undertake an exploratory trial for preventing obesity in SA children, and pilot the measurement instruments for a definitive trial. The intervention package will be developed using the MRC framework for complex interventions, focusing on environmental factors.