Politics & Government
Foster Care for Morbidly Obese Children? One Doctor Says Yes
In a Journal of the American Medical Association article published this month, it's argued that the government has the right to step in because the child's welfare is at risk.
Pop-Tarts for breakfast?
Big Macs for dinner?
Virtual water skiing at workout time?
Find out what's happening in Plainfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
If this is your brood’s summer schedule, you may be heading for a child well-being check – especially if Junior is swelling at the waistline.
A couple of high-level health policy wonks are saying foster care may be better than letting kids live with parents who allow them to become so overweight they are candidates for bariatric surgery, since the long-term effects of the operation on children have yet to be understood.
Find out what's happening in Plainfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The controversial opinion, published in this month’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, calls for state intervention only in the worst of the worst cases of morbid obesity. It’s not the answer for most of the 2 million U.S. children with a body mass index at or beyond the 99th percentile.
Still, the article - penned by Dr. David S. Ludwig, who has affiliations with the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health and Children's Hospital of Boston, and lawyer Lindsey Murtagh - has hit a nerve among some parents and commentators who sense a slippery slope.
“Intrusive government intervention,” cry those with a libertarian bent.
“Needed safeguards for helpless dependents too young to understand the complex relationship between calories in and calories burned,” others reason.
Where do you stand? Do you think it’s government’s place to take very overweight children away from the parents who let them get that way? Are parents responsible for their kids’ diet and weight? How do you advise your children on healthy food choices? How do parents help an overweight child learn to drop pounds without wounding self-esteem?
