Identification of positive childhood experiences with the potential to mitigate childhood unhealthy weight status in children within the context of adverse childhood experiences: a prospective cohort study
Mellar, B. M., Ghasemi, M., Gulliver, P. , Milne, B., Langridge, F., McIntosh, T., Fouche, C., Swinburn, B. & Hashemi, L. ORCID: 0000-0001-6449-3834 (2025). Identification of positive childhood experiences with the potential to mitigate childhood unhealthy weight status in children within the context of adverse childhood experiences: a prospective cohort study. BMC Public Health, 25, article number 8. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20727-y
Abstract
Background
Despite potential protective and mitigating effects of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) on poor health outcomes, limited research has identified relevant PCEs and examined their individual and cumulative associations with weight status, or their mitigating effects on the associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and obesity in children. This study aims to develop an exploratory PCEs Index with the potential to protect against or mitigate the association between ACEs and unhealthy weight status.
Methods
Data came from the Growing Up in New Zealand study. The analytic sample was restricted to those who provided obesity data at age 8 and one child per mother, resulting in a sample of 4,895 children. Nine individual ACEs and their cumulative scores, a newly developed PCEs index consisting of six individual PCEs and (their) cumulative scores, and an overweight/obesity variable were included in the analyses.
Results
By age eight, experience of at least 3 PCEs was reported by 72.1% of the sample. However, the experience of the highest number of PCEs (5–6) was only reported by 23% of the sample. Four out of six assessed PCEs were associated with decreased likelihood of overweight/obesity. A dose-response effect was observed where experience of three or more PCEs was associated with decreased odds for obesity (AORs decreased from 0.77 for 3 PCEs to 0.54 for 5–6 PCEs). No consistent mitigating effects were found for individual PCEs; however interactions were found between reporting at least four of the six PCEs, experience of cumulative ACEs, and reduced odds for overweight/obesity at age 8.
Conclusions
A critical number of PCEs may be required to mitigate the detrimental impacts of ACEs on weight status among children. These findings reinforce the need to consider a constellation of strength-focused ecological domains to alleviate the burden of childhood obesity, particularly for children exposed to multiple adversities.
Publication Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Publisher Keywords: | Positive childhood experiences, Adverse childhood experiences, Childhood obesity, Mitigation |
Subjects: | R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services |
Departments: | School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Violence and Society Centre |
SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution International Public License 4.0.
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