Childhood Obesity

Childhood Obesity: A Bibliographic Essay Childhood obesity is an epidemic that is affecting the lives our youth. It has drawn national attention by many. Even first lady Michelle Obama has started a campaign aimed to address this problem. According to the article Michelle on a Mission, “the initiative is about families making manageable changes that fit with their schedules, budgets, need, and tastes” (2010). There are two main reasons for my interest in the topic of childhood obesity. First, as a future elementary teacher, I am interested in learning about some of the issues facing our youth. As a volunteer at an elementary school, I’ve been seeing some of the effects of this epidemic on the children. I’m also interested in this topic on a more personal level because I have a niece that suffers from being obese. I would like to know what factors may cause childhood obesity and the various techniques to help her with her weight battle. I also have two children of my own. Although they are at a healthy weight, I want to make sure that they continue to stay within their weight range and don’t suffer from the effects of obesity.
I began gathering information on childhood obesity through the online databases available through Ferris State University 's FLITE library. The first database I began searching under was Academic OneFiles. I searched using the keywords "childhood obesity" hoping to get an idea of what sort of articles were going to be available. This search rendered 7,166 different results. With so many articles to choose from, I decided to narrow my research to full text articles. This narrowing resulted in 1,192 journals that I was able to sift through. After seeing all the results for full text articles, I decided that it would be best to narrow my search again and see if I could find articles relating to more specific areas within my topic. I then began searching under the Health Sciences (Sage Full-Text) database since I knew that any

References: Anderson, P. M., Butcher, K. F., (2006), Childhood obesity: trends and potential causes. [Electronic version]. The Future of Children, 16(1). Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Bales, C., Bales, M., Bales, C., Bales, W., Bales, D., (2010), Engaging families in the fight against the overweight epidemic among children. [Electronic version]. Childhood Education, 86(3). Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Ding, E. L., Hu, F. B., (2008), Determining origins and causes of childhood obesity via Mendelian randomization analysis. [Electronic version]. Pl o S Medicine, 5(3). Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Facts about childhood obesity and overweightness. (1999). [Electronic version]. Family Economics and Nutrition Review. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Kohl, H. W. III, Hobbs, K. E., (1998), Development of physical activity behaviors among children and adolescents. [Electronic version]. Pediatrics, 101(3). Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Myers, S., Vargas, Z., (2000), Parental perceptions of the preschool obese child. [Electronic version]. Pediatric Nursing, 26(1). Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Academic OneFile database. Obama, M., (2010), Michelle on a mission. [Electronic version]. Newsweek, 155(12), 40-41. Retrieved June 30, 2010, from Health Science (Sage Full-Text) database. Philipsen, N. M., Philipsen, N. C., (2008), Childhood overweight: prevention strategies for parents. [Electronic version]. The Journal of Perinatal Education, 17(1). Retrieved July 11, 2010, from Health Science (Sage Full-Text) database.