*Wang Qian, Nurzihan Hassim
Abstract:
The global focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in the last few years has seen the rapid growth of non-communicable diseases (NCD) and its risk factors in Malaysia which have inadvertently impacted young children with obesity. Campaigns on healthy eating and exercising initiated through the 10th and 11th Malaysian Plans on conventional and new media have met with some success but have only targeted adult audiences, particularly through MyHealth Portal developed by the Ministry of Health. Moreover, awareness regarding childhood obesity is still considerably low as the numbers of obese children continue to rise. The overarching objective of this study is to examine the reports on childhood obesity intervention in mainstream media, specifically online newspapers.
Keywords: Childhood obesity, positive deviance, health communication, health literacy, non-communicable diseases