COVID-19 Related School Closings and Risk of Weight Gain Among Children

By A. Rundle, Yoosun Park, Julie Herbstman, E. Kinsey, Y. Wang. Obesity, 2020

716 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing substantial morbidity and mortality, straining health care systems, shutting down economies, and closing school districts. While it is a priority to mitigate its immediate impact, we want to call attention to the pandemic's longer-term effect on children's health: COVID-19, via these school closures, may exacerbate the epidemic of childhood obesity and increase disparities in obesity risk. In many areas of the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has closed schools and some of these school systems are not expected to re-open this school year. The experiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore suggest that social distancing orders, if lifted after short periods, will have to be periodically re-instated to control COVID-19 flare ups. In short, we anticipate that the COVID-19 pandemic will likely double out-of-school time this year for many children in the U.S. and will exacerbate the risk factors for weight gain associated with summer recess.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b564c6bfec658d238390ccea7f0bd33e7be05561

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Citations in the corpus

Early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on physical activity and sedentary behavior in children living in the U.S. (2020, background): “It has been argued COVID-19 school closures will lead to increased rates of obesity in children [12, 13] in part because schools provide opportunities and facilities for physical activity through physical education and recess [14–16].”
Effects of COVID-19 Lockdown on Lifestyle Behaviors in Children with Obesity Living in Verona, Italy: A Longitudinal Study (2020, background): “(1) to recently advance the argument that the COVID-19 pandemic, by restricting children from attending school, will exacerbate the risk factors A cc ep te d A rt ic le”
The Success and Struggles of Physical Education Teachers While Teaching Online During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021, neutral): “…to help children obtain 60 min or more of physical activity (PA; IOM, 2013), moving to an online environment caused concern for not only educational outcomes (Eyles, Gibbons, & Montebruno, 2020) but also current and future health outcomes of children (Rundle, Park, Herbstman, Kinsey, & Wang, 2020).”