Childhood Obesity: Environment, Behavior, and Physiology

Dear Colleagues,

Recent estimates by the World Health Organization report a 4-fold increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in youth aged 5–19 years compared to rates in the mid-1970s. Early life overweight and obesity is a strong predictor of adult obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and cancer. Therefore, there is an urgent need to consider the complex factors that contribute to early life obesity, including behavioral, environmental, and physiological risk factors among diverse populations.

Thus, research in pediatric populations is needed at local, national, and international scales which:

• Utilize robust measures of measuring adiposity and physiological mechanisms;
• Quantify long-term risk of various determinants and obesity outcomes;
• Are generalizable to higher risk populations;
• Address synergistic effects of environment, behavior, and/or physiology on childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions;
• Compare and consolidate data to infer causal pathways relating to childhood obesity risk.

This Special Issue is open to original research, review articles, short reports, brief commentaries, and meta-analyses, related to childhood obesity and/or related cardiometabolic conditions.

Topics may include but are not limited to examination of:

• Environmental and/or sociocultural determinants of childhood obesity;

• Childhood obesity disparities related to sociocultural and racial/ethnic differences;
• Pre- and/or postnatal exposures and their relationship to childhood obesity;
• Pathophysiological mechanisms associated with childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions;
• Synergistic effects of environment, behavior, and physiology on childhood obesity or related cardiometabolic conditions

Dr. Claudia Toledo-Corral
Dr. Tanya Alderete
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.