The most important tools in combating childhood obesity?Positive school attitudes and a physical education programme are vital, according to American researcher Margaret Demment.The doctoral student at Cornell University will speak on childhood obesity this week, part of a lecture organised by the Bermuda Diabetes Association.“I came into the nutrition programme at Cornell interested in the influences of food on the health of individual communities and families,” said Ms Demment, whose dissertation focuses on obese and overweight children in rural and urban New York.“I was looking at the broad spectrum. The more I observed the more I learned how important an issue obesity is for [the United States]. I became specifically interested in preventing obesity in childhood.”Research showed trends suggested a strong correlation between a family’s socioeconomic status and childhood obesity, particularly minority children, she said.“What I wanted to look at was how changes in low income over a child’s lifetime impacted their risk of obesity. I wanted to look at children who were downwardly mobile.”The researcher found children whose parents had lost jobs or divorced were at a greater risk of obesity than they had been before crisis hit the family.“There is still a lot of research that can be done to look at connections between low income and overweight and obesity,” she said. “It could be that parents are more stressed for time and resources. It could be that the easier and cheaper food options tend to have a lower nutrient quality and are more calorie-dense.”She found that the children in the more rural areas she looked at were actually less active than those in urban environments. They also had less access to good healthcare.“They tend to get driven everywhere,” said Ms Demment. “Often there are no sidewalks where they live. Sometimes they are on a bus for an hour or more just to get to and from school.”Ms Demment went to rural and urban middle schools and talked to principals, teachers, school cafeteria managers and students. She found that school attitudes played a major role in the health of students.“I found that the attitude of schools and the belief of staff members has an effect,” said Ms Demment. “If they are positive about physical activity, very often, the students will also be positive. Also schools with better sports facilities and programmes also tended to have students with lower body mass indexes.”A BMI is a number calculated from a person's weight and height. Healthcare professionals use BMI to decide if someone is overweight or obese. If they are, then they have a greater risk of developing heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain cancers.Ms Demment said there has been a lot of work looking at why children are less active today than they were in the past. Some of it has to do with parents’ perception of safety. Parents are afraid to let their children play outside for fear they will be kidnapped or attacked.“It is also about the real onslaught of screen time through television, computers, tablets and phones,” said Ms Demment. “Parents don’t shoo their kids out the door and say ‘go play outside’. There has been a lot of good work that has shown the relationship between screen time and an increase in overweight and obesity in both boys and girls.”There is also evidence to suggest gender differences. Girls from low-income backgrounds are more likely to be overweight than boys from the same background.“I think there are two important areas to focus on,” she said. “One is improving the nutritional quality of school lunches. We could be doing a lot to make those more healthy and more diverse. We need to be introducing students to more vegetables. On the other side of it, I think physical activity has been declining for kids for a long time. Finding ways to prevent that decline in physical activity as kids grow up is really important. Finding ways to continue to have physical education in the school curriculum is also important. A lot of schools have been cutting programmes because they don’t have time in the day. We need to find ways to keep that going and encourage dance clubs, sports and various activities.”She said while schools may want to target students who are at risk for being overweight or obese, it is important to remember that all children need physical education.“I think that we focus a lot on overweight and obesity because it is a symptom of us eating less healthy and being less physically active,” Ms Demment said. “Maybe we should focus more on being more physically active and less on weight status. Weight status is an alarm bell that something is going wrong, but the focus really should be getting good nutrition and being active and that applies to all kids.”She was introduced to the Bermuda Diabetes Association through her husband, Michael Reid, an archaeologist currently working on a project here.Thursday’s talk takes place at 7pm at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. For more information call 297-8427. The lecture is free.