June 2025

Expanding NCCOR’s Student Hub: More Tools, More Support

June 2025, NCCOR

As summer begins and graduation season marks a time of transition for many students, NCCOR is helping bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world applications with resources in the NCCOR Student Hub.

The Student Hub is an online platform for students and early career researchers and professionals to access a variety of free tools and resources relevant to their work and education in child health and well-being. Over the years, the Student Hub has grown to include a newsletter, case studies, and guides to NCCOR’s tools, and it continues to add new materials to address the latest science.

By strengthening the Student Hub, students like Caroline Rodriguez, a public health practice major at the University of Maryland and intern at the National Cancer Institute, can complement her classroom learning with real world examples.

“I think NCCOR resources are very beneficial for students to use in their educational development because they connect you to up-to-date and relevant information that you may not have been aware of before,” says Caroline. “The resources can help students explore research topics and areas of interest related to their coursework. Additionally, the Student Hub is a great resource to learn more about what NCCOR has to offer. It is like getting advice from other students about how NCCOR can advance your studies or professional work.”

In the coming months, the Student Hub will add new teaching toolkits on the Obesity-Related Policy, Systems, and Environmental Research in the U.S. (OPUS) workshop. OPUS is a two-part workshop series that showcases how cutting-edge methods, like design thinking and implementation science, are shaping the next generation of interventions.

Through these tailored resources, NCCOR can continue to translate science into practice, encourage collaboration, and amplify our impact.

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NCCOR Toolbox: How NCCOR Tools Help Measure Youth Summer Activity

June 2025, NCCOR

Summer is a prime time for students to engage in hands-on research that explores real-world health challenges and solutions. One standout example is featured in NCCOR’s Connect & Explore webinar, Tools in Action: Featuring the Summer Physical Activity and Friendship Study. This webinar showcases how graduate student Tyler Prochnow used NCCOR’s Measures Registry to explore youth physical activity and social connections during summer, when outdoor play often peaks. The study highlights the value of high-quality measures in evaluating how environmental and social factors influence kids’ engagement with outdoor activity. Watch the webinar to see how NCCOR’s tools can support your own research promoting healthy, active lifestyles for youth.

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FDA and NIH Announce Innovative Joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program

May 09, 2025, U.S. Food & Drug Administration

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new, joint innovative research initiative that will serve as a key element in fulfilling U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s commitment to Make America Healthy Again. With diet-related chronic diseases continually rising, it is imperative that the FDA and NIH work in lockstep to invest in gold standard science, prioritize a better understanding of the root causes to end the diet-related chronic disease crisis and safeguard the health of America’s children.

Under the new Nutrition Regulatory Science Program, the FDA and NIH will implement and accelerate a comprehensive nutrition research agenda that will provide critical information to inform effective food and nutrition policy actions to help make Americans’ food and diets healthier. The initiative will aim to answer questions such as: 1.) How and why can ultra-processed foods harm people’s health? 2.) How might certain food additives affect metabolic health and possibly contribute to chronic disease? And 3.) What is the role of maternal and infant dietary exposures on health outcomes across the lifespan, including autoimmune diseases?

[Source]

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Psychosocial Factors and the Development of Childhood Overweight and Obesity: A UK Cohort Study

May 13, 2025, Nature

Background
We examined the role of psychosocial factors in overweight and obesity development.

Methods
UK Millennium Cohort Study data of children with normal weight at baseline were analysed. Weight changes were determined from baselines at ages 11 (n = 7979) and 14 (n = 6906) to follow-up at age 17. Baseline individual psychosocial factors were combined into two distinct indexes (caregiver-reported child mental health, child-reported psychosocial well-being). Regression models examined the associations between baseline indexes and individual psychosocial factors and overweight and obesity development (vs. no development) and body mass index (BMI) z-score changes.

Results
Worse child mental health, but not psychosocial well-being, at age 11 was associated with overweight and obesity development (OR = 1.14; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.27) and increased BMI z-scores (β = 0.08; 95% CI = 0.04, 0.12) to age 17. No psychosocial indexes at age 14 predicted the outcomes. Further analyses showed that child mental health at ages 11 vs. 14 was more likely to predict the outcomes. Based on individual factors, externalizing symptoms and experiencing peer bullying at age 11 may be important contributors to overweight and obesity development.

Conclusions
Poor child mental health at age 11 is associated with overweight and obesity development by age 17. Late childhood/early adolescence may be a sensitive period in which psychosocial factors predict body weight trajectories.

Impact
Worse psychosocial factors, particularly poor mental health, at ages 11, but not 14, were associated with overweight and obesity development and increased BMI z-scores by age 17. Late childhood/early adolescence may be a sensitive period for mental health in predicting future weight change.
Future research will benefit from exploring this potential sensitive period and understanding potential mechanisms.

[Source]

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A Child’s First Five Years Provide a Critical Window of Opportunity for Preventing Overweight and Obesity

May 12, 2025, Medical Xpress

The first five years of a child’s life may be key to preventing overweight and obesity in years to come, say the authors of new research being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025) held in Malaga, Spain, May 11–14.

The study found that a child’s body mass index (BMI) at the age of 6 is a better predictor of their risk of overweight or obesity at age 18 than their BMI at other points in their childhood.

Every one-unit increase in BMI at age 6 more than doubled (2.35 times) a child’s odds of being overweight or obese at 18. (BMI was adjusted for age and sex.)

The study also found that if a child with a higher BMI reached a healthier weight before the age of 6, they were no longer at a higher risk of living with overweight or obesity in their late teens.

However, if they returned to a healthier BMI when they were 6 or older, they were still at higher risk of overweight and obesity.

This suggests that the first five years of a child’s life provide a critical window of opportunity for preventing overweight and obesity in young adulthood, says Jasmin de Groot, of Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

De Groot and colleagues used data from an ongoing prospective cohort study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to track the BMI trajectories of thousands of children in the Netherlands.

Weight at birth (adjusted for gestational age and sex) and BMI at age 2, 6, 10, 14 and 18 years was available for 3,528 participants, 52.9% of whom were female.

A child’s BMI generally increases with age. For this reason, the researchers used reductions at the rate in which BMI was increasing (i.e., a BMI that was growing more slowly) as an indicator of healthy growth—and of reaching a healthier weight—rather than a reduction in BMI.

Some 32.3%, 22.3%, 24.7% and 20.6% of the 3,528 children lived with overweight or obesity at the ages of 2, 6, 10 and 14 years, respectively.

Many of these children were still in the overweight or obese range at the age of 18. Of the children with overweight or obesity at the ages of 2, 6, 10 and 14 years, 32.5%, 53.9%, 57.2%, and 70.3%, respectively, still lived with overweight or obesity at 18 years.

A higher BMI at any point in childhood, regardless of earlier BMI, was associated with a higher chance of overweight or obesity at 18 years.

A high BMI at the age of 6 was particularly strongly associated with overweight and obesity at 18.

However, when the researchers split each age group into three groups based on their BMI, they found that if a child in the group with the highest BMI slowed down the growth of their BMI before the age of 6, their odds of living with overweight or obesity at 18 were similar to those of a child with a stable, average BMI.

Reaching a healthier weight after the age of 6 did not have the same effect: The children with the highest BMIs were more likely to live with overweight or obesity at age 18 regardless of how their BMI changed from the age of 6 onwards.

The findings, say the researchers, emphasize the importance of monitoring BMI in early childhood.

De Groot adds, “We need to understand how children grow and develop if we are to help future generations grow up healthier and give every child a chance at a happy, healthy life.

“Our research assists with this by showing that a child with overweight or obesity isn’t destined to live with overweight or obesity as a young adult—and that the first five years of a child’s life provide a fantastic opportunity to intervene and prevent them experiencing overweight and obesity in the years to come.”

[Source]

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Bigger Bellies in Childhood Linked to Development of Metabolic and Heart Health Risk by 10 Years Old

May 11, 2025, EurekAlert!

New research being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Malaga, Spain (11-14 May) reveals that adverse waist-to-height ratio trajectories (a marker for central obesity) during childhood may increase cardiometabolic and cardiovascular risk at 10 years old.

Notably, children with gradually increasing central obesity from birth were more likely to show early signs of metabolic and cardiovascular risk by age 10. This included elevated blood pressure and higher levels of biomarkers linked to systemic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction, such as triglycerides, insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), glycoprotein acetyls (GlycA), and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP).

“With rapidly rising rates of childhood obesity worldwide, it is important to understand how central obesity during childhood is already linked to early signs of metabolic deterioration, including elevated blood pressure and circulating biomarkers associated with future cardiometabolic disease,” said lead author Dr David Horner from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Obesity in childhood and adolescence has been associated with cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, musculoskeletal diseases and premature death in adulthood. Early detection of overweight and obesity in children is critical to enable interventions that may prevent long-term health consequences.

The build-up of belly fat deep within the abdomen is known to be a greater risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic disease than body mass index (BMI) alone. Waist-to-height ratio (dividing waist circumference by height) is an indicator of central obesity and a key predictor of cardiometabolic health.

To explore how adverse waist-to-height ratio trajectories during childhood can help predict cardiometabolic and cardiovascular risk by age 10, researchers analysed data from 700 children enrolled in the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC2010)—a longitudinal population-based mother-child cohort study.

The children were followed at 14 regular clinical visits from 1 week of life until the age of 10 years. Children’s cardiometabolic risk was derived from composite scores (adjusted for age and sex) of HDL cholesterol (so-called “good cholesterol”), triglycerides (blood fats), glucose, blood pressure (height-adjusted), and HOMA-IR (insulin resistance).

The researchers identified three distinct waist-to-height ratio trajectories from 1 week to 10 years: a stable “reference group” comprising two-thirds of the children; a “rising then stabilising” group including roughly 1 in 6; and a “slow-rising” group also including roughly 1 in 6. (See Figure A in Notes to Editors).

After adjusting for potential confounding factors, including sociodemographics, puberty status, and lifestyle factors such as physical activity, sleep, and diet, the researchers found that children in the “slow-rising” group had cardiometabolic risk scores 0.79 standard deviations higher, and cardiovascular disease risk scores 0.53 standard deviations higher, than those in the reference group. These shifts represents a significant shift away from the reference population risk level, indicating substantially worse cardiometabolic health by age 10.

This “slow-rising” group also had higher systolic blood pressure, alongside elevated levels of C-peptide (suggesting the body is producing excess insulin), HOMA-IR (a marker of insulin resistance associated with type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders), glycoprotein acetyls (GlycA) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), both markers of chronic inflammation linked to cardiovascular disease.

In addition, these children had lower levels of HDL cholesterol (often referred to as “good” cholesterol), painting a broader picture of early warning signs for future heart and metabolic disease. (See Figure 1B in Notes to Editors).

Compared to the reference group, the “rising then stabilising” group had significantly lower haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, indicating better blood sugar control, and slightly higher apolipoprotein B (ApoB) levels, an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

When researchers took into account how much belly fat the children had at age 10, they found this explained most of the differences in health risk between the groups. As Dr Horner explains: “This means that the children’s current level of abdominal fat–not just how their fat developed over time—was the strongest predictor of their heart and metabolic health. Once this factor was included in the analysis, the earlier pattern of gradual fat gain (“slow-rising” group) was no longer linked to higher risk on its own. This suggests that where a child ends up, how much belly fat they have at age 10, matters more than how they got there. In other words, it’s the amount of central fat at that age, not necessarily the pattern of gain over time, that plays the biggest role in determining their present-day risk for heart and metabolic problems.”

He adds: “Our findings highlight that an elevated waist-to-height ratio at age 10 is a key clinical indicator of cardiometabolic risk in children. This reinforces the importance of monitoring central obesity in routine care, not only tracking weight, but specifically measures of central obesity as part of standard assessments. As clinical focus shifts from weight alone to identifying children with early signs of metabolic risk, waist-to-height ratio offers a simple and effective tool for detecting central obesity with cardiometabolic relevance. Identifying children with elevated ratios can help clinicians target those at greater risk of metabolic dysfunction, supporting more personalised interventions and early prevention of long-term complications.”

The authors note that this is an observational study, meaning it shows a strong association but does not conclusively prove that adverse central obesity patterns in childhood increase cardiometabolic risk by age 10. As part of this work, the team is currently analysing repeated blood samples using metabolomics to gain deeper insight into the biological mechanisms linking central obesity to cardiometabolic and cardiovascular disease risk.

As Dr Horner explains, “We plan to expand this analysis to include longitudinal metabolomic data throughout childhood and to hopefully validate findings in another independent mother-child cohort.”

[Source]

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Key Brain Areas Are Larger in Teenagers with Abdominal Obesity

May 10, 2025, EurekAlert!

Several areas of the brain, including regions that play a critical role in learning and memory and in the control of emotions, are larger in adolescents who are living with obesity, new research being presented at year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025) has found.

The finding, from a study of thousands of teenagers in the US, raises concerns that obesity affects not only physical health but also learning, memory and control of emotions, says lead researcher Dr. Augusto César F. De Moraes, of UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin, Department of Epidemiology, Texas, USA. “This is particularly alarming, given that the teenage years are such an important time for brain development,” he adds.

The percentage of children and adolescents worldwide who are living with obesity more than quadrupled among girls (from 1.7% to 6.9%) and among boys (from 2.1% to 9.3%) between 1990 and 2022.

In the US, it is estimated that more than one in three children aged 5 to 14 (36.2% of boys and 37.2% of girls) are living with overweight or obesity – equating to more than 15 million children.2

Obesity – particularly abdominal obesity – has been linked to changes in brain development in the past, with regions key to cognition and the regulation of emotions seemingly particularly vulnerable.

Health inequalities like poor access to quality education, safe neighbourhoods and healthy food are well-known contributors to physical health problems – but their role in brain development and cognition is often overlooked.

To find out more about how obesity and health inequalities affect brain structure and cognition,  Dr De Moraes and colleagues in the US, Brazil, and Spain analysed data from 3,320 participants in the ABCD study, an ongoing study into how childhood experiences affect brain development and health.

The participants were recruited from cities in 17 states and followed for four years, from 2016-2018 to 2020-2022. (For list of cities, see notes to editors.) The average age of participants at baseline was 9.9 years and 47.4% were girls.

They were categorised based on obesity status, with further stratification by abdominal obesity (measured using waist circumference). At baseline, approximately 34.6% of participants were classified as having abdominal obesity.

Structural MRI scans assessed the volume of several brain regions of the brain’s subcortex, including the amygdala, hippocampus, caudate, accumbens, pallidum, putamen and thalamus.

Health disparities were assessed using the Child Opportunity Index, which measures a child’s opportunities via the quality of neighbourhood features such as education, walkability and access to healthy food and green space.

Several of the brain regions were larger in adolescents with abdominal obesity than in their peers without abdominal obesity. The biggest changes were seen in the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and learning, and the amygdala, which regulates, or controls, emotions, including fear, happiness, anger and anxiety.

The hippocampus was approximately 6.6% larger and the amygdala was about 4.3% larger in teens with abdominal obesity compared to those without.

The amygdala was particularly large in teenagers with very high levels of abdominal fat (a waist-to-height ratio over 0.5) This raises concerns that excess body fat affects how the brain handles emotions, say the researchers.

The thalamus (which relays information about movement, hearing, taste, sight and touch) and caudate (which helps control movement) showed smaller increases in size.

The study also found that teens from lower-opportunity areas showed reduced development in key brain regions, such as the hippocampus, putamen and amygdala, compared with their peers in higher-opportunity areas. “This difference was even more pronounced among adolescents with persistent abdominal obesity,” says Dr De Moraes. “It highlights the urgent need to address both social inequality and health risks to support not only physical wellbeing but also healthy brain development in youth.”

The authors explain that in the context of the young developing brain, both decreased and increased growth can cause harm. Thus having lower-than-normal brain development, as shown in the teens in lower-opportunity areas, or larger-than-normal parts of the brain due to inflammation caused by obesity, can both be harmful.

Dr De Moraes concludes: “Our findings suggest that obesity, particularly abdominal obesity, can impair teenagers’ learning, memory and control of emotions.  I worry about how these changes, which are occurring at the age of 13 or 14, might affect them later in life.

“There’s even a chance they could be a higher risk of things like of memory problems or dementia as they get older.

“That’s why we believe supporting healthier habits early on is so important, not just for physical health, but for brain health too.

“Treating and preventing adolescent obesity won’t only improve health – it may improve brain health, too.”

[Source]

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Five Minutes Exposure to Junk Food Marketing Results in Children Consuming 130 kcals More Per Day, Regardless of Media Advertising Type

May 10, 2025, EurekAlert!

Exposure to junk food advertisements (relative to non-food) results in children and adolescents  consuming significantly more calories during the day, regardless of the type of media advertising, according to a randomised crossover trial being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Malaga, Spain (11-14 May).

The study found that 7–15 year-olds exposed to just 5 minutes of adverts for foods high in saturated fats, sugar, and/or salt (HFSS) consumed on average 130 kcals per day extra, which is equivalent to the calories in two slices of bread.

The timely research is presented as many countries across Europe and globally are considering implementing curbs on unhealthy food advertising to tackle rising childhood obesity levels.

“Our findings offer crucial novel information on the extent, nature, and impact of unhealthy food marketing via different types of media on young people’s eating behaviour,” said lead author Professor Emma Boyland from the University of Liverpool in the UK. “Even short exposure to marketing of foods high in fat, salt, and sugar can drive excess calorie consumption and potentially weight gain, particularly in young people who are more susceptible to advertising and whose eating patterns influence their lifelong health.”

The causes of obesity are complex and influenced by many factors. While research has highlighted connections between product-based advertising of foods HFSS in audiovisual media on children’s immediate [1] and later consumption [2], little is known about the impact of other forms of media including brand-only (i.e. ads only featuring branding elements such as logos, but no food or beverage products) or audio advertisements (e.g., podcasts, radio) in shaping eating patterns.

It is also unclear whether food advertising effects differ by individuals’ sociodemographic characteristics, and therefore how it may contribute to health inequalities.

To explore this further, researchers conducted a randomised crossover trial to quantify the impact of HFSS food (vs non-food) ad exposure on children’s immediate and later intake, and to assess whether this was moderated by either advertisement content (brand-only vs. product), media type (audio-visual [e.g., TV] vs. visual [some social media posts] vs. audio [podcasts] vs. static [paper billboards]), or sociodemographic characteristics.

In total, 240 volunteers between the ages of 7 and 15 years from schools across Merseyside, UK, participated in the study. On two different occasions, participants were exposed to 5-minutes of HFSS food and then non-food advertisements that were either brand-only or product based through one of the four different medias.

Researchers then measured children’s subsequent ad libitum intake of snack and lunch foods along with their height and weight to calculate body mass index (BMI). Home postcodes were used to calculate area-level socioeconomic status (SES) using the 2019 English Index of Multiple Deprivation.

The analysis found that following exposure to HFSS food ads, children consumed more snacks (+58.4 kcals), more lunch (+72.5 kcals), and more food overall (snack and lunch combined (+130.90 kcals) than after exposure to non-food ads.

Interestingly, advertisement content did not moderate this effect, such that brand-only ads were as effective as product ads in increasing intake.

While neither the type of media (i.e., audio-visual, visual, audio, static image) nor socioeconomic status moderated children’s intake, the researchers found that for every standardised unit increase in BMI score (zBMI, adjusted for a child’s age and sex), children consumed an additional 17 kcal overall.According to Professor Boyland: “Our results show that unhealthy food marketing leads to sustained increases in caloric intake in young people at a level sufficient to drive weight gain over time. This study is the first to demonstrate that brand-only food ads, for which there is currently no restrictive advertising policy globally, increase children’s food intake. This new knowledge will help in the design of urgent restrictive food marketing policies that can protect children’s health.”

[Source]

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