Published: 18 October 2007
Fighting Obesity in among Schoolchildren
At least 500 more school nurses need to be employed immediately to fight the obesity time bomb facing the nation’s school children and students.
As shock new figures by the Foresight report revealed that obesity will shorten the lives of millions, Unite/Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association said that the fight back needs to start in the pre‑school years and continue in the school classroom.
Unite/CPHVA Professional Officer for School Health and Public Health, Ros Godson said:
“As a society, we are facing an obesity crisis and one of the best ways to tackle the problem is to start young.
As trained health professionals, school nurses are ideally placed to offer advice and counselling to young people on diet and nutritional issues – unfortunately, there are just too few school nurses – about 2,500 in total across the UK - to meet the health needs of millions of school aged children”.
Ms Godson said that too few school nurses were being trained - only 156 specialist community public health school nurses in 2006-7 - and that money earmarked for the school nurse service was not ‘ring fenced’ and therefore vulnerable to being diverted by NHS managers into meeting the budget deficits of primary care trusts.
Ms Godson continued:
“The government’s Choosing Health White Paper goal is that there should be a full-time school nurse for every secondary school in England and its cluster of primary schools by 2010.
However, we calculate that at the current rate of training the government’s target may not be achieved until 2023.
A good way for the government to counter the negative publicity generated by the obesity crisis this week is for there to be a pledge for 500 more specialist school nurses to be trained and then employed immediately”.
Further information
CPHVA website
Foresight Tackling Obesities: Future Choices Project
IASO.ORG - International Association for the Study of Obesity
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