Adriëtte Oostvogels

profile can contribute to identifying women who should be included in a prevention programme. Not every woman with overweight or obesity will develop pregnancy complications (like GDM) or give birth to a child that is large for gestational age. Identifying women with a truly increased risk, implies focusing on those women who need extra prenatal care, without targeting overweight women as a group. In the Netherlands, children are seen regularly from birth until age 18 years, by Youth Health Care workers. During the first 4 years, the children regularly visit Youth Health Care centres for immunisations and monitoring of their development and growth. During these visits, Youth Health Care physicians and nurses could pay specific attention to the growth of girls of obese mothers and the growth of children from a low socioeconomic background. Even though the latter group might not show a higher BMI during the first 2 years, our results show that children with overweight at age 5-6 years had a higher BMI after age 2 years. Youth Health Care centres also have ‘walk-in hours’ to measure infant growth. During these hours nurses should emphasise that growth according to the growth centile of the child is important, irrespective of whether it is the 15 th or the 85 th centile, as long as the child grows in proportion in both weight and length. The city of Amsterdam is not only the birthplace of the ABCD-study but also the origin of a unique prevention programme aimed at tackling obesity: Amsterdamse Aanpak Gezond Gewicht (AAGG). 127 This programme has not only reduced childhood obesity rates by 12%, it has also helped to reduce the socioeconomic inequalities in childhood obesity. 128 This shows that an integral approach, in which all healthcare providers (e.g. midwives, general practitioners and Youth Health Care) work together with the schools, can reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity and the socioeconmic inequalities in childhood obesity. 234 Chapter 9