Background
Effective interventions to prevent overweight and obesity in children are urgently needed.[
1] The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity is increasing worldwide with all its consequences for immediate health, already apparent from increasing health care costs for obesity related morbidity in youth, as well as for health in later life, due to tracking of overweight and obesity into adulthood. [
2‐
9]
The increase in childhood overweight and obesity can be attributed to behavioural and social ecological factors causing long-term imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. [
10,
11] In fact, the environment has been recognized more and more as 'obesogenic' agent in the aetiology of obesity. [
12‐
15] Physical, socio-cultural, economic and political environmental influences on energy balance related behaviours can be distinguished at the micro level (households, schools, neighbourhoods) as well as at the macro level (health care, media, public transport, town planning).[
14] Programmes on the prevention of childhood obesity should therefore address both behavioural and environmental determinants.
Many obesity prevention programmes have been developed and evaluated, but so far only yielded 'best practice' recommendations. A recent, large synthesis research of 147 programmes on prevention and treatment of childhood obesity over the last two decades revealed that engagement in physical activity (PA) is a critical intervention in childhood obesity prevention programmes.[
1] These findings are supported by other reviews. [
16‐
20]
The school emerged as a critical setting [
1]. In a review of 25 school-based childhood overweight prevention programmes 17 of 25 were effective based on a statistically significant reduction in body mass index or skin-folds in the intervention group compared to the control group.[
21] Another review included 14 intervention studies in the school arena, of which half were successful and had an effect on either overweight or obesity.[
22]
In the Netherlands most recent figures demonstrate that prevalence rates of overweight in 4–16 year olds are rising at an even faster rate than before. Prevalence rates of overweight (including obesity) reached 14.5% for boys and 17.5% for girls in 2003 as compared to 9.7% and 13.0% in 1997 and 3.9% and 6.9% in 1980.[
23] The largest increase in prevalence of overweight and obesity in the Netherlands occurred among primary schoolchildren [
24] and the highest rates of childhood overweight and obesity are found in ethnic minorities and metropolitan areas [
25].
Figures on the amount and trends of PA in Dutch primary school children are largely lacking, but a recent study on physical activity in relation to the physical environment in the Netherlands demonstrated that only 3–5% of the primary schoolchildren in inner-city neighbourhoods was physically active for the recommended one hour a day, as measured by self-report and accelerometry.[
26]
Apparently, relatively high prevalence rates of childhood overweight and obesity coincide with low rates of PA in inner-city neighbourhoods, at least in The Netherlands, urging schools and local governments to take action.
In order to contribute to the prevention of overweight in primary schoolchildren, a school based intervention was developed targeted at the reduction of overweight and inactivity in primary schoolchildren attending schools in inner-city areas in Rotterdam addressing both behavioural and environmental determinants. This paper describes the intervention and the study design for assessing the effectiveness of the intervention.
Discussion
The intervention combines structural changes in the amount of PA children receive with behavioural change through the school curriculum. A specific element is the implementation of three PE classes a week by a professional PE teacher, while two PE classes a week by a classroom teacher constitute the usual mandatory curriculum. Another specific characteristic of the intervention is the targeting of a population with relatively low SES and a high proportion of migrant children. A population that has been underserved so far. [
1]
Several evaluated obesity prevention programmes have targeted PE or increased PA in the primary school setting. [
57‐
68] Most of these interventions altered the content of existing PE lessons [
59‐
61,
63‐
65,
68], others increased PA in the classroom [
62] or during breaks [
66]. Only a few actually augmented the amount of PE lessons a week for six months [
57] or for 8 weeks[
67].
Strengths of the study are the use of a cluster randomized controlled study design, the size of the study and the objectively measured primary outcome measures of weight status and fitness.
Weaknesses of the study are that secondary outcome measures are derived from self-report questionnaires and no objective measure of PA is used. Furthermore, in the self-report questionnaires the choice was made to measure a large amount of concepts to cover all aspects of the intervention. To keep the length of the questionnaires acceptable for children in the age of 9–12 years many single item questions were used at the cost of using validated questionnaires. The debate on self-report by children largely concerns recall problems of actual energy balance related behaviours.[
69] We took those into account by making recall periods short. Self-reports by children on determinants of energy balance related behaviours like attitudes and intentions have not been subject to debate.
We hypothesize that the intervention will reduce the number of overweight children and improve fitness scores due to increased physical activity in comparison with the control condition. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the intervention will impact positively on energy balance related behaviours and its determinants in the intervention group as compared to the controls.
The results of our study are especially important for decisions on the amount of PE classes in the usual school curriculum and the position of a professional PE teacher within this curriculum.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
WJ designed the study and drafted the manuscript. EJvZ participated in the design of the study. IR and RvW participated in the design of the intervention and provided feedback on the drafts. JB and HR provided critical feedback on the study and drafts. All authors approved the final manuscript.