Childhood obesity: bringing children's rights discourse to public health policy.

Childhood obesity is widely understood as a public health issue, but is not commonly understood from a legal perspective. Children's rights discourse can add significant empowerment to public health-based policy, which alone lacks effectiveness in the face of commercial and other counteracting influences. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has the potential to be used by advocates for children's health to facilitate child health policies pertaining to the issue of childhood obesity. This is because children's rights, as defined in the articles of the convention, establish the essential conditions required by children to achieve optimal health and wellbeing. A rights-based approach may improve children's welfare by encouraging a less fragmented approach to the issue of childhood obesity. The articles of the convention can be used as a template for interdisciplinary collaboration, with a more coherent outcome possible. By articulating childhood obesity as a children's rights issue--not just a public health issue--a more effective strategy for addressing the problem can be developed and implemented.