Overweight Prevalence Changes Before and After COVID-19 in Spain: The PESCA Program Longitudinal Outcomes 2018–2021

Abstract

Background: Overweight prevalence in Spain reached critical levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely exacerbated this issue. The PESCA (Programa Escolar de Salud Cardio-vascular) program is a multicomponent school-based intervention, launched in 2018 with the aim of tackling this health problem and reducing overweight rates in youth. Objectives: (1) To analyze the efficacy of the PESCA program intervention on body composition, overweight prevalence, physical activity (PA)/sport practice, resting time, and screentime before COVID-19 and (2) to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 and the associated lockdown measures on these parameters in the studied sample. Methods: This longitudinal study included 207 children and adolescents from schools in Madrid (aged 2.82 to 15.84 years; 44.4% girls), with measurements taken at three time points: two before COVID-19 and one after its onset. Overweight prevalence, body fat percentage diagnosis, physical activity, resting time, and screentime were assessed. Cochran’s Q test and repeated-measures ANOVA were used to compare outcomes across the three assessment time points. Results: Overweight prevalence remained stable among children in the PESCA program before COVID-19 (17.87% to 19.81%). However, a significant increase was observed from point 2 to point 3, post-COVID-19 onset (19.81% to 26.57%). Similarly, healthy body composition significantly deteriorated from 63.16% at point 2 to 52.48% at point 3. PA/sport practice prevalence significantly increased until COVID-19 onset (80.19% to 91.22%) but declined thereafter (91.22% to 79.10% from point 2 to point 3). Although the differences were small, resting time significantly decreased post-COVID-19 onset (from 10.18 h at point 2 to 9.96 h at point 3), with no changes in the first period. Non-academic screentime showed a similar pattern: stable before COVID-19 and significantly increased after its onset (1.61 h at point 1; 1.70 h at point 2; 2.29 h at point 3). Conclusions: The PESCA program positively impacted PA/sport practice prevalence and may have provided some protection against overweight and related variables during the pre-COVID period. However, health authorities’ restrictions and lockdown policies during COVID-19 negatively affected the health and lifestyle variables studied, offsetting previous improvements.