Motor Competence and Body Mass Index in the Preschool Years: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of 5545 Children from Eight Countries.
Clarice Maria De Lucena MartinsVicente Romo-PerezE Kipling WebsterMichael Joseph DuncanLuís Filipe LemosAmanda E StaianoAnthony D OkelyMagistro DanieleFabio CarlevaroFarid BardidFrancesca MagnoGlauber Carvalho NobreIsaac EstevanJorge Augusto Pinto da Silva MotaKe NingLeah E RobinsonMatthieu LenoirMinghui QuanNadia Cristina ValentiniPenny CrossRachel A JonesRafael S HenriqueSi-Tong ChenYucui DiaoPaulo Felipe Ribeiro BandeiraLisa M BarnettPublished in: Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) (2023)
Public health policies should position motor skill competence as critical for children's obesity prevention from early childhood onwards. Robust longitudinal and experimental designs are encouraged to explore a possible causal pathway between motor skill competence and BMI from early childhood.