Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Childhood obesity is a challenging health problem for the Global Health Agenda. The sociologie pour l’obésité tackles the topic critically and to focus particularly on the public discourse of obesity as an epidemic. By adopting this approach, this work focuses on building the vocabulary of childhood obesity and the role and jurisdiction of health professionals in the literacy in this field. In the first part, childhood obesity is treated as an example of the medicalization of the Global Health Agenda; in the second, we propose a systematic review of the guidelines and recommendations for childhood obesity. The result of this double analysis allows to conclude that despite the health literacy related to prevention and treatment of childhood obesity is draws more on common sense than on peculiar health information, health professionals are able to maintain their professional jurisdiction thanks to a system of medicalization that unequally distributes responsibilities.