Fat kids abandoned by DHBs

The response to the nation’s obesity crisis is lagging, write Samantha Gee and Charles Anderson.

Rising rates of childhood obesity now put New Zealand kids among the fattest in the developed world but our worst-performing regions are still doing nothing to address the crisis.

Figures released by the Ministry of Health show nearly 100,000 Kiwi children are considered not just overweight, but obese.

Of those 97,479 children nationwide, one fifth of them – 22,171 – come from the Counties Manukau region.

But the Counties Manukau District Health Board said it had no programmes at all to specifically target childhood obesity.

‘‘I don’t blame them. The DHBs have been told where their priority money is – none of them are targets for obesity,’’ said Labour’s health spokeswoman, Annette King.

‘‘We have virtually wasted nine years in New Zealand ignoring [obesity] until last year.’’

King said DHBs in low socioeconomic areas were hamstrung by government funding which had not, until recently, made obesity a priority. The environment is pushing you to sit down, sit on your device, not get enough sleep and to go to the supermarket and eat sugar. Chairman, South Island Childhood Healthy Weight Clinical Advisory Group

The Government will soon be forcing DHBs’ hands – a national target for childhood obesity levels is being introduced next month.

New Zealand has the thirdhighest childhood obesity rate in the OECD – only Mexico and the United States are worse.

Eleven per cent of Kiwi kids are obese and another 22 per cent are overweight.

Tairawhiti District Health Board, on the North Island’s East Coast, has the largest percentage of obese kids compared with its population – a quarter of all children there are overweight.

That’s 2937 children, but the district health board has just 90 families signed up to its Active Families programme.

Tairawhiti’s group manager population health, Virginia Brind, admitted that more needed to be done.

‘‘The Tairawhiti Integration Forum has been considering how best, in light of the very high proportion of overweight children in the district, to develop and support services to assist whanau,’’ she said.

The programme was recently given a boost in funding – last year it only received enough money to work with 35 families.

Last October, Health Minister Jonathan Coleman announced a wide-ranging package to tackle childhood obesity targeting children, families and mothers with a focus on nutrition and lifestyle advice.

A total of 22 separate initiatives were announced, including referring more overweight children for dieting and exercise interventions from the age of four.

But health researcher and obesity expert Professor Boyd Swinburn said there were few ways for obese children to get help, and it was difficult for DHBs to provide the required programmes.

‘‘It is good to have that target for those kids and families who are struggling with the problem. Those DHBs that do have something, it will be good for them to share it around and new programmes will need to be developed.’’

Under the new initiative, it’s expected that by December next year 95 per cent of children identified as obese will be referred to an appropriate health professional for assessment.

Taranaki also sits high on the table – 21 per cent of children in the region are obese. The DHB runs an intervention programme, which sees about 120 families each year.

Of those regions in the top 10, just one was from the South Island.

Canterbury had the lowest level of obese children – just 3.9 per cent.

Barry Taylor, chairman of the South Island Childhood Healthy Weight Clinical Advisory Group, has been researching the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity for the past 15 years, and said rates had continued to rise during that time.

‘‘The environment is pushing you to sit down, sit on your device, look at your device late at night, not get enough sleep and to go to the supermarket and eat sugar,’’ he