Background: Feeding behaviors adopted by parents influence children's eating, and parent mental health may affect feeding interactions. Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders among adults; thus, there is a need to comprehensively understand the relationship between parent anxiety symptomatology and feeding behaviors. Objective:…

Objective: The study assessed perceived health, health behaviors and conditions, and medical care utilization among students of different weight categories. Participants: Participants were college students (n = 37,583) from 58 institutions who responded to a national survey of student health behaviors. Methods: Chi-squared and mixed model analyses…

Food insecurity has been identified as an understudied risk factor for weight-based stigma and discrimination. This study leverages data from 1,904 working-age adults to examine the food insecurity--weight-based discrimination relationship, as well as tests gender differences for this association. Logistic regression models revealed that food…

Objective: Social physique anxiety (SPA) is characterized by concerns of evaluation focused on one's physical appearance. Past work suggests factors such as gender, body mass index (BMI), and exercise habits uniquely contribute to SPA. However, no study has examined the interactions between these three variables. The current study sought to…

Early intervention can reduce disability in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Screening for autism spectrum disorder in young children identifies those at increased likelihood of diagnosis who may need further support. This study assessed in "utero" exposure to maternal obesity and diabetes and offspring performance on…

This study examined the relationship between the accuracy of parental reporting of children's sleep duration compared to objectively measured child sleep and tested whether any discrepancies were related to childhood obesity prevalence in a sample of Latinx families (N = 119). A paired sample t-test revealed that parents significantly…

Purpose: Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children's literature around fatness. This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's…

The current study examines the efficacy of an 8-week pretend play intervention targeting social-cognitive abilities in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), ages 6-9. PWS is a rare disorder associated with various social, emotional, and cognitive challenges linked to pretend play impairments, and for which interventions are sparse. Nineteen…

Group model building is a participatory workshop technique used in system dynamics for developing community consensus to address complex problems by consensus building on individual assumptions. This study examines changes in individual mental models of the complex problem of childhood obesity following participation in group model building (GMB),…

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been linked with caloric overeating and weight gain. We employed a mediation analysis to determine whether pandemic-associated overeating was a direct effect of COVID-19-related anxiety (affect regulation theory) or mediated by a coping mechanism of escape eating (escape theory). A diverse pool of college…

Gastrointestinal disturbances (GIDs) are relatively common in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study assessed associations between maternal obesity, diabetes, preeclampsia, and asthma and likelihood of ASD with GIDs. This retrospective cohort study included 308,536 mother-child pairs of singletons born between 2001 and…

Objective: To explore Central American men's perceptions of healthy body weight, factors that influence weight gain and increase awareness of being overweight/obese, consequences of excess weight gain and gender similarities and differences in body weight. Design: In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with low-income, overweight or obese…

Objective: To examine the association of CRF and adiposity with cardiometabolic risk factors and metabolic syndrome among emerging adults. Participants: 5681 (60.1% Men; 21 ± 1years) college students from a large university located in the northeast of the United States. Methods: Participants completed an objective health assessment that involved…

To convert accelerometer-based devices onto the same scale, a platform called Monitor-Independent Movement Summary (MIMS) was created and used in national studies. Yet, its physical activity (PA) intensity cutoff scores have not been established, making it less useful. This study was to link MIMS with the ActiGraph Count, known as "the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the validity of evidence for self-efficacy to regulate physical activity scale (SERPA) measurement using an exploratory latent variable approach. The objectives were to explore the dimensionality, temporal invariance, and external validity of scores produced by the SERPA, a modified version of the barriers…