![\"SPRING16tipping-the-scale-on-obesity-awareness\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/SPRING16tipping-the-scale-on-obesity-awareness.jpg\")
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Dr. Jian Zhang, associate professor of epidemiology in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, is bringing national awareness to the obesity pandemic in the United States through a series of highly publicized research articles about the misperceptions of obesity among children, adolescents and their parents.
\nIt\u2019s an idea he discovered through his own misperceptions about his son.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy younger son is relatively slim compared to his friends,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth my wife and myself were concerned that the little one might have an underweight issue socially and this might not be good for a boy. However, when we compared the little one\u2019s weight and height with a growth chart, biologically, he is actually overweight and almost obese. Both my wife and myself are public health professionals, and we are still struggling with the discrepancy between socially and biologically acceptable norms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zhang is not alone in his struggle. In an examination of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), he and his research team found that the parents of preschoolers and school-aged children were getting remarkably worse at perceiving whether or not their child is overweight or obese. Across the studies, Zhang observed a steep decline in this ability \u2014 a 30 percent decline \u2014 in less than 20 years.<\/p>\n
And while the issue of body weight misperception has been understood among researchers for a long time, the results still surprised him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat most surprised me was the trend of the kids as well as the parents to refuse to admit their body weight was a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThe declining trend really surprised me. That might be the reason our publication drew so much national attention: the decline within just such a short time period \u2014 12 or 15 years \u2014 a decline of 30 percent. That\u2019s a really huge decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
The national media took notice, and Zhang and his team found their research discussed in such outlets as The Washington Post<\/em>, TIME magazine<\/em>, U.S. News and World Report<\/em> and \u201cThe TODAY Show.\u201d<\/p>\n Zhang and his team continue to research body weight misperceptions from different angles, and while he hopes that the results continue to raise awareness, he says that he hasn\u2019t found the best way to communicate the message to parents and their children.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, one in three adults are obese,\u201d he said. \u201cOne out of three are overweight. That means two out of three adults are in the range of unhealthy body weight. So, we have not yet figured out the most effective communication between the parents and the kids, given that the parents themselves are also struggling with body weight. So if the parents are struggling with body weight, what they say is much less powerful to their kids.\u201d<\/p>\n Zhang believes the key to this communication is the medical doctor, who represents a more trustworthy source of expertise, but who is also limited in the amount of time he or she can visit a patient. It\u2019s a difficult problem, but in spite of the difficulties, Zhang says he has seen rays of hope.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Georgia, for example, we definitely see a decline in obesity prevalence among the school kids and among adolescents,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least from 2011 to 2013, we saw a clearly declining trend that\u2019s really an encouraging sign. That means what we\u2019re doing is working. We just need to do more.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Doy Cave<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Focus on Obesity Awareness <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-2965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-spring-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}