The latest issue of Statistics Canada health reports includes two reports on how parent health is associated with child health. The studies look at the child-parent association of physical activity, sedentary behavior and body weight status.  Both studies use data collected from the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS), an ongoing comprehensive survey to directly measure health at the national level for the household population aged 3 to 79. Excluded from the survey are full-time members of the Canadian forces, people living on reserves or in other Aboriginal settlements, in institutions, and in some remote regions. Both studies use data from the three cycles of the CHMS covering  cover the years 2007 to 2013. Data is collected from respondents through in-person interviews, a mobile examination centre, and accelerometers worn for one week. The two studies look at biological parent-child pairs.

In Parent-Child association in physical activity and sedentary behaviour, it is found that parent's level of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day is associated with child MVPA. For every 20-minute increase in a parent’s MVPA, the child’s MVPA increased by 5 to 10 minutes. Parent-daughter correlations tended to be higher than parent-son correlations. A correlation between parent sedentary time (watching television or computer use) and child sedentary time was also found but is not as strong as the physical activity measures, for instance an additional hour of parent sedentary time was associated with an 8 to 15 minute increase in child sedentary time. Regardless of parents’ physical activity, supporting children through enrolment in lessons or league or team sports led to further increases in children’s physical activity. Enrolling a child in lessons or league or sports was associated with a 5 to 15 minute increase per day in MVPA of the child depending on the time spent on these activities. 

In Parent-Child association in body weight status, a child's body mass index (BMI) is correlated with their biological parent’s BMI.  The correlation between child and parent BMI was 0.24 with a higher correlation for girls than boys. Parent BMI explained 2% of the variance in boys’ BMI and 12% of the variance in girls’ BMI. A logistic and linear regression model is used to estimate the level of association while controlling for other factors, such as sex and age of both parent and child, daily fruit/vegetable consumption, physical activity, screen time, sleep, breastfed, parent's education, and lone-parent household. After controlling for these other factors, children having both of their biological parents obese were at a greater risk of being overweight or obese and this association is stronger for girls. 

Statistics Canada: Parent-child associations for physical activity and weight and projected body mass index