A pilot study to assess childhood overweight in a New Jersey public school district with Hispanic student majority: Lessons learned and role of policy

Childhood overweight (CO) in the US is reaching alarming levels particularly among Hispanics. To initiate CO prevention, local prevalence rates are needed but are often missing. This preliminary study assesses CO levels in a New Jersey (NJ) low socioeconomic public school district with 72 % of Hispanic students, highlights difficulties encountered with conducting the study, and presents recommendations for improving data collection at the district level.

All students attending a NJ public school district during the 2004-2005 school year were eligible. A sample of 2,089 children was analyzed to obtain overweight and at risk for overweight proportions by demographic characteristics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, etc.).

Overall, 47.3 % of children were overweight (26.8 %) or at risk for overweight (20.5 %). Hispanic boys had the highest proportion of overweight (30.8 %), followed by Hispanic and White girls (29.1 % and 25.7 %, respectively). Although school nurses in NJ collect overweight-related information from students, accessing this information in a de-identified mode required a non-standardized, cumbersome process of obtaining authorizations from different parties at multiple levels.

Findings suggest that CO is a problem in the sampled NJ public school district and particularly for Hispanic children. State government can help combat the CO epidemic by writing policy that facilitates the collection of CO information such as by requiring the creation of a database at the state level for school nurses to enter de-identified CO-related information that can meet both local and state requirements. Arkansas has already implemented a similar statewide system.