Examination of parental knowledge of child weight status and associated potential health risks

The identification of parental health knowledge related to obesity and overweight status in children is an important area. Its importance relates to understanding gaps in knowledge that can be used to create targeted intervention and prevention strategies to improve the management of child’s weight.

There is a growing awareness of the potential health risks associated with increased childhood weight. It is currently unclear how well the public understands these risks and if understanding is linked to improvement in obesity or overweight levels in children. This review focused on determining if the current research is available to describe parental knowledge and whether it is connected to improved outcomes in the child’s weight status.

The search for original research articles published between 2003 and 2018 involved six databases, including CINAHL, EBSCOhost, PubMed, PsycINFO, Psychology, and Behavioral Sciences Collection, and OneSearch. The OneSearch database is a comprehensive search engine that allows simultaneous searching of the entire library category and results that are ranked by relevance to the search terms. The terms used included for the keyword search in each database included: “knowledge” or “awareness,” “health risk” or “consequence,” “obesity” or “overweight,” and “weight” or “body mass index,” “child,” and “parent” or “parental.” A content analysis of included articles was performed to synthesize available literature into a review.

This review included nine articles dealing specifically with parents of children and their knowledge levels. As there was limited information about if child’s weight status connected to parental knowledge, an additional seven articles addressing how knowledge affects weight at any age was examined. The findings for parental knowledge and its effect have mixed results and varying methods of measurement.

While some studies have indicated the importance of knowledge, it is difficult to establish a reliable connection due to the limited examination of this subject. This is, therefore, an underexplored area that needs further study.