BSPED2021 Oral Communications Oral Communications 9 (6 abstracts)
1Centre for Endocrinology, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K., London, United Kingdom; 2Department of Paediatric Endocrinology, Barts Health NHS Trust - Royal London Hospital, London, UK, London, United Kingdom; 3Department of Paediatric Surgery, Barts Health NHS Trust - Royal London Hospital, London, UK, London, United Kingdom; 4Department of Paediatrics, Barts Health NHS Trust - Royal London Hospital, London, UK, London, United Kingdom; 5Department of Paediatric Diabetes, Kings College London, London, UK, London, United Kingdom
Background: Childhood obesity is the single most pressing public health emergency of the 21st century. The prevalence has increased at alarming rates and globally over 41 million children under 5 years of age are classified as overweight/obese. Overweight and obese children are likely to stay obese as adults and develop multi-morbidities including type 2 diabetes, cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cardiovascular disease at an earlier age. The availability of technology has revolutionised the development of applications (apps).
Aim: Many app developers have focused on weight loss and/or calorie counting. This may not be the main aim for children. Our aim was to study the current landscape of obesity apps available on the market for children.
Methods: The search terms obesity, weight, calorie, diet, obesity children, weight management, diet apps, calorie counter kids, weight loss were used on the Apple Store and Google Play Store. We also searched Google and the NHS app sites.
Results: The top 60 apps from the search were studied and after removing duplicates resulted in 46 apps. Studying 46 apps in detail we found that only 7 of the 46 were appropriate for children under the age of 12 and 4/46 apps approved by a medical body, 3 by the NHS (NHS weight loss plan, MyFitnessPal and Nutracheck) and 1 by the American Academy of Pediatrics Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight (Change Talk). Apps that calculated a childs BMI did not include BMI SDS or z-scores to enable understanding of normal range BMI in the context of age and sex. None of the apps linked in with local services and very few catered for culturally diversity in the context of different languages and cuisines.
Conclusion: There are very few child-friendly obesity apps available that incorporates exercise and diet measurements in a culturally appropriate manner. These would be important considerations in our development of a healthy weight app appropriate for children, young people and their families.