WIN Notes
Spring 2000
Design of
Clinical Trial
Underway
Genes Play
Key Role in
Childhood
Obesity
Gorden
Continues
Distinguished
Research
Career
at NIH
Schools Instill
Healthier
Habits in
Youth
Conference
Highlights
Obesity as a
Public Health
Crisis
Girl
Power and
You! Begins
Phase II
Materials
From Other
Organizations
NIDDK
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Cigarette smoking is more likely to occur in children who are concerned about their weight or practice weight-control behaviors, according to a study published in the October 1999 issue of Pediatrics. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard School of Public Health, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute base this conclusion on their study of a cross-sectional sample of over 15,000 children ages 9 to 14 (54 percent girls and 46 percent boys).
The findings showed that 10 percent of girls and boys had used cigarettes, and 7 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys were contemplating smoking in the next year. The prevalence of concerns about weight and weight-control behaviors (exercising, purging, and dieting) was found to be higher among the cigarette experimenters, the contemplators, and the few regular users than among the precontemplators (those who had never smoked and did not plan to try cigarettes in the next year). In addition, more smokers and contemplators were overweight or misperceived themselves as being overweight, compared with precontemplators. Girls had more weight misperceptions than boys. In females, 15 percent of contemplators and 14 percent of experimenters and users misperceived themselves as overweight, compared with 10 percent of precontemplators. In males, weight misperceptions were found in 9 percent of contemplators, 7 percent of experimenters and users, and 5 percent of precontemplators.
"Strategies to educate children on body image and healthy weight-control practices must be developed in such a way as to counteract both tobacco use and obesity," according to the study authors.
The study team leader, Graham A. Colditz, M.D., Dr.P.H., of Brigham and Women's Hospital (an affiliate of Harvard Medical School) and Harvard School of Public Health, is a grantee of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The published study can be found on the Web at www.pediatrics.org or reprints may be obtained from A.L.F., Channing Laboratory, 181 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, email: lindsay.frazier@channing.harvard.edu.
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