Danielle Longmore
Dr Danielle Longmore is a paediatric endocrinologist at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital and clinician scientist fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, researching obesity and youth-onset type 2 diabetes.
4
APPEARANCES
3
PODCASTS
Oct 9, 2026
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
And I think I'm, as a pediatric endocrinologist, I'm particularly interested in what this will do for the diagnoses of obesity or clinical obesity in young children.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
And certainly, what we found was that there was a, a reduction in the diagnosis of clinical obesity in children, um, and at the lowest prevalence in that early part of life, and then it increased steadily through life.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
And certainly in childhood and early life, clinical obesity was lower than BMI-defined obesity, but later in life, it was actually, um, the reverse.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
So clinical obesity means that you actually have ill health or functional problems related to excess body fat.
Norman SwanHOST
... is, is the difference between the two, uh, if you like, not that important? In other words, it's still obesity that counts?
Norman SwanHOST
So did I get that right, Danielle, or do I need to be fixed up with the objectives of your research?
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
Well, I think, I mean, Priya set it up beautifully in that I think clinicians are keen to understand the impact of obesity on health rather than just using body size, which is what BMI measures, as a proxy for that.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
And so, as Priya mentioned, there was this Lancet commission which created this diagnostic criteria, which is really very new.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
Um, and I think, uh, certainly big changes in our food and the processing of food.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
Um, access to, uh, higher calorie foods, um, has certainly become, you know, much, much, they're much more available for all of us.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
Um, I think, you know, soft drinks, um, for a while they became kind of just the drink that everyone drank.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
I remember, um, during the COVID lockdown when you weren't allowed into the supermarket before 8 A.M. unless you were a senior, and I got to the supermarket on my way to work, and I had a horrible toothache.
Danielle LongmoreGUEST
I'm not gonna go down the aisles." He would not let me in, and this little old lady came up to me and said, "I'm happy to go and get that for you, love."