Effectiveness of school-based intervention in obese children.

Introduction: Obesity (OB) refers to excess body fat in the body, whereas overweight (OW) is the extra body weight for that particular height. Insufficient physical activity (PA) or excess calorie intake over a duration of time most often leads to OB or being OW. Childhood OB increases the chances of being obese in later stages of life as children are indulged in increased screen time, consumption of beverages and processed food, and less quantity of nutritive food. As children spend a maximum period of time in school, many preventive interventions focus on schools to improve the level of PA. Hence, the present study aimed to study the effectiveness of school-based interventions (SBIs) in increasing the PA and improving the physical fitness (PF) of obese children in the age group between 10 and 16 years. Methodology: A prospective interventional study was carried out at various schools in Pune, Maharashtra, India, for a duration of 6 months (24 weeks). The study involved 450 children in the age group between 10 and 16 years. The children were divided into the experimental group, control group, and normal healthy children group. The outcome measures used for the assessment included body mass index, percentage body fat (PBF), PA by using Youth Physical Activity Questionnaire (YPAQ), and fitness using the FITNESSGRAM Results: Obese children in the experimental group and control group demonstrated a percentage change of mean YPAQ score of 20.04% and 11.97%, respectively. For mean curl-up test, the score was 33.77% and 26.34%, respectively. For mean trunk-lift test, the score was 33.01% and 20.73%, respectively. For mean sit and reach test (right), the score was 33.36% and 20.60%, respectively. For mean VO2, the score was 23.98% and 13.99%, respectively. For mean sit and reach test (left), the score was 33.68% and 24.41%, respectively. All the results were found to be statistically significant. Moreover, the percentage change of mean body mass index (BMI) was 12.04% and 6.01%, respectively, and the mean percentage of body fat (PBF) was 19.95% and 9.73%, respectively. Furthermore, changes in fitness gram scores before and post intervention in normal children on comparison with obese children demonstrated a percentage change of 12.64% and 9.76%, respectively. Conclusion: The present study concluded that school-based PA intervention could be beneficial in reducing obesity among the children. The study demonstrated an increase in PA and PF along with reduction in BMI and PBF among school children with statistically significant results. If greater impact is expected from school-based interventional programs, PA should be considered as the primary focus, and it should be included as directly as possible.