Children’s perspectives
Children’s voices have been absent in research regarding prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity. ‘Children’s perspectives’ is a series of studies performed in Norway; Family, Blimedno, Childhood obesity and treatment, KOMPASS, aiming at listening to children’s perspectives and experiences of prevention and treatment of child overweight and obesity.
About the projects:
The FamilY-project (2009-2018)
The FamilY-project was initiated by CORI in collaboration with Centre for obesity in Health region South East in Norway. Within ‘Children’s perspectives’, we performed qualitative research to gain insight into children’s perspectives of long-term treatment for severe obesity at two Norwegian rehabilitation centers.
Within the framework of childhood studies we explored how children with severe obesity who participate in a long-term rehabilitation programme at two rehabilitation centers changed the perception of their bodies from ‘being fat’ to ‘suffering from obesity’ by embracing the biopedagogies involved. Due to this transformation, ‘obesity’ was made into an entity – ‘a thing’ that the children could work on –, which was used for coping and change. The findings have had important implications for family-based approaches in pediatric obesity treatment. Traditionally, the gold-standard for family-based approaches were aiming at influencing children’s weight-related behaviours indirectly through the parents. Our research shows that this is not based on the more prominent family theories, that is, theories in which families are understood as a system with interdependent units, a collection of actors that can exert agency. The research calls for a different approach to children in obesity treatment that acknowledges children as lifestyle change agents in their own right.
Blimedno (2011-2018)
Blimedno is an initiative at CORI consisting of a range of projects with the goal of developing methods for involving children and youth in local and regional public health work.
Collaborators in the project have been NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and Trøndelag County Municipality.
Blimedno culminated in a conference with 300 participants in 2018, where research findings and methodology were presented by children and adult researchers.
KOMPASS (2018-2020)
The prevalence of overweight and obesity is much higher in rural than in urban areas in Norway and internationally. In the project 'Customized Prevention and Treatment - Overweight and Obesity among Rural Children' (KOMPASS), the goal was to gain insight and generate knowledge about the significance of local culture and physical residence and how it contributes to social inequalities in health regarding overweight and obesity in rural areas by listening to children’s perspectives and involving them as co-researchers.
Finding from the study show that the children’s discourses about rural food largely displayed imagined, rather than actual foodways, and that the children used food to create a rural identity that is distinct from a modern, urban one. Their imaginary foodways were based on conceptions of rural traditions of food provenance in rural areas in Norway, i.e., food obtained by hunting or farming. The children claimed this was ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ food.
However, these children, not surprisingly, have been exposed to global shifts in food, where industrially produced food sold in supermarkets has replaced food from activities on the land and where ultra-processed rather than self-preserved foods have become the norm. Therefore, to fit their imaginary foodways, we found that the children downplayed their intake of modern, processed, fast food. This downplaying of the consumption of modern, ‘urban’ food and the over-representation of natural and traditional food in the imagination of their diet suggest that the children used food to maintain their rural identity and to distance themselves from the dominant urban population that “encroaches” their rural idyll and imaginary foodways. Food was used to maintain and strengthen identity and continuity as a group, an imagined rural community in opposition to the urban majority.
Want to read more? Imagined foodways and rejected biopedagogies: Rural children's perspectives of rural foodways - Ersfjord - Children & Society - Wiley Online Library
Childhood obesity and treatment (2022-2024)
Childhood obesity and treatment is a study aiming at exploring children’s views on body image and school weight screening, and children and adolescents' perspectives on pediatric obesity treatment and body image.
The study is ongoing.
Objectives
Gain insight into children’s perspectives of prevention, assessment, and treatment of overweight and obesity
Nytteverdi: Achieve more tailored prevention, assessment and treatment of overweight and obesity, in the region of Mid Norway based on children’s perspectives and needs
Period
2009-d.d.
Contact
Ellen Ersfjord
Disseminations
The FamilY-project: Imagined foodways and rejected biopedagogies: Rural children's perspectives of rural foodways (ntnu.no)
Blimedno (in Norwegian only): (19) (PDF) Barns tanker om «et sunt liv», og hvordan involvere barn og unge i folkehelsearbeid? Erfaringer fra Blimedno-prosjektet. (researchgate.net)
Funding
NTNU, Norske kvinners sanitetsforening, CORI, The county governor of Trøndelag
Collaboration
Norwegian Centre for Child Research and Regional Centre for Child and Youth, NTNU