Understanding and acting on the growing childhood and adolescent weight crisis: a role for social work.

The childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity rates are rising at an alarming rate. Numerous individual, family, community, and social factors contribute to overweight and obesity in children and are explored. If left unaddressed, the epidemic of childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity may lead to amplified problems for individual children--including acute and chronic physical and psychological complications--and for the larger social environment. National efforts by researchers in a myriad of disciplines are underway to address this the issue at the individual, family, and community levels. These efforts include many steps with which social workers should seek to align themselves in terms of their own research and collaborative research and several barriers that hold practice implications for social workers. The importance of social work intervention and collaboration within primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention levels is explored.