Can Obesity Start Before Birth?
“People don’t realize how early this starts,” said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a pediatrician and the director of Duke Children’s Healthy Lifestyle Program, a clinical treatment program for obese kids.
Dr. Armstrong is quoted in an article titled, “Children’s weight woes might start in the womb,” in the January 2nd issue of the News and Observer. The article is part of a five-day series called the Frontiers of Fat, which is looking at the science and scientists working to better understand and solve the obesity epidemic.
Smart Start is doing something similar. We know that more than 31 percent of North Carolina’s children ages 2 to 4 are overweight or considered at risk for becoming overweight. That’s why with the support of a $3 million grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, we’ve just launched a program to tackle childhood obesity by focusing on young children from birth through age 5. It’s one of the few efforts that focuses on very young children; an important population as the News and Observer article suggests.
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Read the News and Observer article.
