How Schools Can Help Kids Stop Obesity

School's Role In Fighting Obesity

When parents send their children to school, they entrust the school with the care of their child. Thus, the school has a duty to look over the health and safety of the child just as though it were a parent. In today's economy, it often takes both parents to work leaving children sometimes in the care of a third party for much of the day. In an effort to make sure the child is getting the best attention and consideration possible, a school may take small steps to alert parents when over a critical development in the child's well-being becomes manifest. In this context, a school sending a letter to parents discussing a child's BMI is appropriate. This paper will show that schools should be involved in helping decrease the obesity rate in America because they are the last line of defense when it comes to the child's safety and health.

It is no secret in America that obesity is a killer. More people die in America from obesity-related diseases (such as heart disease and diabetes) than they do from gun violence (Butler, 2015). Indeed, heart disease accounts for nearly a quarter of all deaths in America (Butler, 2015). That puts obesity (a main cause of heart disease) at epidemic proportions -- worse than flu, HIV, and cancer. Essentially, Americans are eating themselves to death by not watching what they're eating, not exercising, and not taking the time to monitor their BMI.

If a school is expected to take measures to keep gun violence from occurring on campus, how much more proactive should a school be in monitoring obesity in kids when it is obesity that is the number one trigger of the number one killer in America? Parents should not be upset by the fact that a school is looking after the well-being of a child by alerting parents to dangerously high BMI levels. After all, "schools can help students adopt and maintain healthy eating and physical activity behaviors" such as dietary plans and exercise (Wechsler, McKenna, Lee, Dietz, 2004, p. 6). They have the time and ability to help kids make these decisions at a young age.

What happens, however, is that parents are offended that a school should take it upon itself to pry into something so "private" as a child's BMI. It is almost like asking the child to undress and then giving him or her a full body search -- except it is not. Parents need to understand that monitoring BMI is not an invasion of privacy. It is a safety concern -- and it should be the number one safety concern of all care providers in America, since it is the number one cause of deaths.

Parents might also assume that heart disease is only something that adults need worry about, but the contrary is true: heart disease is the culmination of a life-long habit of poor diet and no exercise. That means it starts in the young. Indeed, as Gortmaker, Peterson et al. (1999) show, "the prevalence of obesity among children and youth in the United States has increased rapidly over the past 30 years" and in kids and young adults "obesity is the most common nutritional disorder" (p. 410). In this context, schools are simply trying to help prevent the epidemic from worsening: instead of outrage, parents should send schools their thanks and gratitude.

Story (1999) notes that schools are in a position to make a "valuable contribution" to the fight against obesity in America (p. S43). This contribution is one that should be taken advantage of -- otherwise it is like sending their children to the frontier of the early days of the nation's expansion, where they could be attacked and killed by natives, nature, or the elements. The last line of defense in frontier days was a man's weapon and maybe a fort if there was time to build one. Today's world is in a much better place to defend itself -- but the deadly foe has changed shape and grown out of our love of luxury.