Early classroom health education prevents abdominal fat accumulation in children

The research National Cardiovascular Center (CNIC) and SHE Foundation, sponsor of “la Caixa” The Foundation has demonstrated that teaching healthy habits through classroom activities helps prevent the accumulation of abdominal fat during the early elementary school years.

This study Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) is one of the largest contemporary school-based health promotion studies and has one of the most extensive participant follow-up schedules.

The conclusion is clear: early interventions to promote healthy habits in elementary school children are likely to be more effective than interventions at later stages.

The study involved 1,771 boys and girls attending 48 public elementary schools. Community of MadridThe schools were divided into four groups. One group of 12 schools implemented a health promotion intervention throughout the six years of primary school. The intervention covered emotion management, acquiring healthy eating habits, active living and body-mind knowledge (SI! Programme – Comprehensive Health). The other two groups implemented the same intervention for only three years, one for the first three years and one for the last three years. The fourth group did not implement any specific health-related intervention.

Throughout the study, a detailed series of measurements of the participants’ cardiovascular health were taken as they grew from age 6 to 12. The measurements included indicators of obesity and body fat accumulation.

Measurements were taken at the start of the study, at the beginning of first grade of primary school, and then at the end of third and sixth grades.

Key results showed that participants who received the intervention during the first three years of primary school gained less weight, had a smaller increase in BMI, and accumulated significantly less abdominal fat than participants in the other groups.

In Spain, almost one in three children suffers from overweight, especially from vulnerable groups. “Schools are an ideal setting to implement health promotion programmes. However, while there are many of these types of programmes, not many are scientifically rigorous and results have often been disappointing or inconclusive. However, interventions to improve children’s health can be beneficial when implemented on a large scale, especially considering that these types of interventions do not have secondary or harmful effects,” said Rodrigo Fernández Jiménez, head of the CNIC’s Institute of Cardiovascular Health and Diagnostic Imaging and author of the study.

The results of this study suggest that interventions promoting healthy lifestyle habits may be effective in reducing childhood obesity if implemented as early as the first grade of primary school.”

Gloria Santos Beneito, Scientific Director SHE Foundation The study’s lead author

“Building on our accumulated experience, we launched a new study this year to evaluate the effectiveness of an adaptation and extension of the SI! program strategies, including reintervention and the use of learning bits during the primary school cycle. This approach could be even more effective as it places less strain on teachers, who are the key actors in this type of school-based health promotion intervention,” added Valentin Fuster, Executive Director of CNIC and lead author of the study.

CNIC is an affiliated center of the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII), an executive agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Directed by Dr. Valentín Fuster, CNIC is dedicated to cardiovascular research and translating the knowledge gained into real-world patient benefit. CNIC is recognized as a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence by the Spanish government (award CEX2020-001041-S, funded by MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). The center is funded through a pioneering public-private partnership between the government (via ISCIII) and the Pro-CNIC Foundation, which brings together 12 of Spain’s most important private companies.