Mentoring helps overweight teenagers, research reveals
A programme launched in the US entitled HealthCorps, which involves educating and mentoring obese teenagers has revealed that the programme has some success with helping them to lead healthier lifestyles.The study, which was published in the journal Childhood Obesity, showed that the programme improved participants' diets and increased their levels of activity.
David Katz, editor-in-chief of childhood obesity, said: "The results achieved by HealthCorps are important, and encouraging ... they suggest that peer mentoring can be part of the solution to the serious problem of teen obesity and related ill-health by modifying behaviours."
Following the programme, 35.7 per cent of female participants reduced their soda consumption and of those who took some 45 per cent reported being more physically active than they had been previously.
In 2009, a study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which was published in the British Medical Journal, revealed that teenage obesity is as damaging for health as smoking.
