Grant: CIHR Café Scientifique Program

The Canadian diverse society has made our nation culturally affluent and progressive. Newcomer families are the fastest growing population in Canada. The health status of newcomer adults declines within a few years after arrival due to adopting the "Western lifestyle", such as high consumption of readily available high energy foods and soft drinks, and low level of physical activity. This adaptation is happening much faster in children than in adults and therefore might pose various health risks for newcomer children. Questions such as, how healthy are newcomer children, how has their nutrition and health status is changed over-time, what are the consequences later in life, and finally, what are the factors affecting the health status of the next generation of Canadians, are very important to raise public awareness. Researchers at the U of S in close collaboration with NGOs and governmental organizations have initiated a project "Healthy Immigrant Children" with the goal to improve health status of newcomer children. Our data reveal that: overall, 29% of newcomer children were overweight or obese; only 3% were allocated in good category according to the Canadian Healthy Eating Index; none of children reached the level of vitamin D sufficient for multiple health benefits; and more than one-third of immigrant children and half of refugee children spent more than two hours every day on sedentary activities such as watching TV or playing video games. These results indicate the need for awareness and active intervention from families, community, service providers and policy makers to prevent health risks related to unhealthy lifestyle in the next generation of Canadians. Hosting a Café Scientifique will provide us with the opportunity to have a very important conversation in an open and informal environment with the public. The audience will share their views with researchers, policy makers and service providers and interact with them in panel discussion.