Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Min­is­ter of Health, re­cent­ly stat­ed that one in every four chil­dren is ei­ther over­weight or obese in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

One year ago, on the eve of World Obe­si­ty Day 2025, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) re­port­ed that "one in every three chil­dren is over­weight or obese,” in the Caribbean. CARPHA al­so “es­ti­mat­ed [the] preva­lence of over­weight and obe­si­ty in adults in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as was 67.5% (an in­crease of 52% from 1990), of which 33.8% (36.5% in women and 31.0% in men) were obese."

The Lancet Glob­al Health Re­port [2024] stat­ed the preva­lence of in­suf­fi­cient phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty among per­sons 18 years and old­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go was 40.0-49.9%.

Ac­cord­ing to CARPHA, obe­si­ty in­creas­es the risk of NCDs in chil­dren and adults, "name­ly car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases (like heart dis­ease and stroke), di­a­betes mel­li­tus, can­cers, and chron­ic res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases (like chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease and asth­ma). NCDs are the lead­ing cause of ill­ness, death, and dis­abil­i­ty in the Caribbean re­gion. Obese chil­dren are more like­ly to be­come obese adults and are at a high­er risk of de­vel­op­ing NCDs in adult­hood." https://carpha.org/More/Me­dia/Ar­ti­cles/Ar­ti­cleID/1004/CARPHA-Ad­vo­cates-for-Sys­temic-Changes-to-Re­duce-Child­hood-Obe­si­ty

One rec­om­men­da­tion for ad­dress­ing over­weight and obe­si­ty is pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) de­fines phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty as any bod­i­ly move­ment that re­quires en­er­gy ex­pen­di­ture (WHO, 2022). Both mod­er­ate- and vig­or­ous-in­ten­si­ty phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty pro­vide sev­er­al health ben­e­fits such as:

• Re­duces Risk of Chron­ic Dis­eases-Reg­u­lar ex­er­cise low­ers the risk of type 2 di­a­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and some can­cers (e.g., colon, breast) (War­bur­ton & Bredin, 2019).

• Im­proves Men­tal Health & Re­duces De­pres­sion (Schuch et al., 2021).

• Weight Loss Man­age­ment (Cox, 2017).

The min­is­ter’s in­di­ca­tion that his min­istry is work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­mote phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in schools is a mean­ing­ful start. How­ev­er, in­volve­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is shaped by so­ci­etal fac­tors such as so­cial class, cul­ture (e.g., ed­u­ca­tion­al cre­den­tial­ism over phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty), safe spaces, gen­dered spaces, and in­di­vid­ual fac­tors such as self-con­fi­dence and mo­ti­va­tion.

Fur­ther­more, it is crit­i­cal in the school sys­tem that teach­ers re­spon­si­ble for trans­fer­ring phys­i­cal lit­er­a­cy and skills are cer­ti­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced to work with chil­dren from het­ero­ge­neous so­cioe­co­nom­ic and cul­tur­al back­grounds.

Hav­ing played sport should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fy serv­ing as a phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teacher. That prac­tice must be dis­con­tin­ued im­me­di­ate­ly. Fur­ther­more, the en­tire ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem must em­brace phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty as im­por­tant, or sweaty stu­dents will be os­tracised and eas­i­ly dis­cour­aged by teach­ers/ad­min­is­tra­tors who wear aca­d­e­m­ic blind­ers.

If the school sys­tem gets it ‘right,’ it has to be re­in­forced in com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly sys­tem. How­ev­er, not every com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly sys­tem op­er­ates on a lev­el play­ing field as it re­lates to ac­cess to re­sources. There­fore, pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in and out of the school sys­tem must be aligned to ad­dress­ing so­ci­ety’s wider so­cioe­co­nom­ic is­sues.