Turn the Tide Foundation's Unjunk Yourself music video program, in collaboration with KidTribe, has released a new video, called, The Process. It uses up-tempo music and themes from The Matrix movies to make the case that not only is food being processed, but so are we as people—with manipulations of food and distorted messages about food. The Unjunk Yourself program is intended to raise awareness among tweens and teens about the importance of diet and physical activity to their health and quality of life, the forces that conspire against their good use of feet and forks and profit at their expense, and the power they have to take matters back into their own hands. The program, currently in development, will link a library of thematic music videos to online tools and resources. The videos are intended to be fun, catchy, and engaging, even as they reveal some of the darker forces at work in modern culture, and create righteous indignation and an impulse to action, similar to the Truth Campaign directed at tobacco companies. Childhood Obesity Editor-in-Chief Dr. David Katz is spearheading the program and The Process can be viewed on the journal's website at www.liebertpub.com/media/childhood-obesity/384/.
Practitioners in a wide variety of fields related to health care, sports and fitness, and food, culinary, and school nutrition may now join the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as an Academy Associate. Associates have access to extensive benefits, including the Academy's Evidence Analysis Library, professional publications, networking opportunities, and preferred pricing on resources and conferences. Qualifications for becoming an Academy Associate include completion of a minimum of a bachelor's degree granted by a US regionally accredited college/university or foreign equivalent and training, certification, or license in one of the specified professions. Some professional designations automatically require a bachelor's or higher degree. For those, only proof of license, training, or certification in the specified profession is required. The Academy is committed to advancing food and nutrition through research, science, and quality. For more information, contact membrshp@eatright.org/.
Christina M. Shay, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as the role of lifestyle in the prevention and reduction of cardiovascular disease. She is the lead author of a study published in the journal Circulation titled, “Status of cardiovascular health in US adolescents: Prevalence estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) 2005–2010.” (Shay CM, Ning H, Daniels SR, et al. 2013;127:1369–1376.) The study examined the cardiovascular health of 4637 participants between the ages of 12 and 19 and population prevalence of individual cardiovascular health behaviors was estimated and rated as poor, intermediate, and ideal. Factors included blood pressure, cholesterol, physical activity levels, blood glucose, BMI, and smoking status. The study concluded that the ideal cardiovascular health behaviors in US adolescents, especially physical activity and diet, were very low and do not bode well for the future health of these children as they reach adulthood.
The American Academy of Family Physicians, the AAFP Foundation, and MetLife Foundation have announced the renewal of a series of grants to family medicine residency programs across the nation to help reduce childhood obesity in their communities. The grants will support the residency programs in implementing innovative, community-based projects designed to reduce childhood obesity by promoting fitness within the entire family. The projects also prepare the next generation of family physicians to engage in similar activities when they enter practice after completing their residency training. The 18-month program, administered through the AAFP's Americans In Motion—Healthy Interventions (AIM-HI) program, is funded by a $250,000 grant from MetLife Foundation. Nine family medicine residencies recently completed the first round of funded projects. The grants were awarded in November, 2011, and provided increased childhood obesity education for 181 participating family medicine residents, who reached over 2000 children and parents. The MetLife Foundation is funding a second round of these grants for 2013–2014. More information can be found at www.americansinmotion.org/.
Mark Daniel DeBoer, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Pediatric Endocrinology Division at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Dr. DeBoer's research focuses on the timing of puberty in chronic disease and appetite regulation. He is the author of a study recently published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood titled “Longitudinal evaluation of milk type consumed and weight status in preschoolers.” (Scharf RJ, Demmer RT, DeBoer MD. 2013;98:335–340). The study looked at 10,700 children between the ages of 2 and 4 years in the US to evaluate relationships between the type of milk consumed and the weight status of the children. The primary measurements were of BMI and overweight/obese status and the type of milk the children drank. The study found that the majority of children drank whole or 2% milk and that across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status subgroups, 1% or skim milk drinkers had higher BMI z-scores than 2% or whole milk drinkers.
The USDA awarded $5 million in four grants to universities throughout the nation to develop childhood obesity intervention programs. The awards were made by USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR) was awarded $4,671,604. The Oregon State University project directors Siew Sun Wong, PhD, an assistant professor of nutrition, and Melinda Manore, PhD, RD, a professor of nutrition, will spearhead the program, “The WAVE Ripples for Change: Obesity Prevention for Active Youth in Afterschool Programs Using Virtual and Real-World Experiential Learning.” This project will teach life skills, such as gardening, food preparation, and food preservation skills, in addition to nutrition and physical activity education to support sustainable healthy eating and adequate physical activity among 4-H soccer team players. The other grantees include: Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL, $25,000; University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, $149,074; and Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, $149,992. More information on the grants can be found at www.nifa.usda.gov/.
Alison Pittman, MSN, RN, CPN, is an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. Her research focuses on pediatric obesity, as well as sibling visitation in pediatric critical care, nursing teaching strategies, and nursing student health. Ms. Pittman was awarded a 1-year community grant from the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation to study the childhood obesity epidemic throughout the Brazos Valley. The research project, Brazos Valley S.P.E.E.D. (Students Promoting Exercise and Excellent Diet), is designed to study the choices middle school children in the Brazos Valley make about exercise. The long-term goal of the study is to implement a three-component educational program for at-risk students at local middle schools. It will include a mentorship component with TAMHSC–College of Nursing students, as well as physical activity and meal/snack preparation guidelines.
Clare Llewellyn, PhD, is a Research Associate at the University College London (UCL) Department of Epidemiology and Public Health in the UCL Health Behaviour Research Centre. Her research focuses on gene-environment interactions in childhood obesity, especially as it concerns appetite regulation and eating behavior. She is the author of a study published in the International Journal of Obesity (Llewellyn CH, Trzaskowski M, Plomin R, et al. March 2013; E-pub ahead of print) titled “Finding the missing heritability in pediatric obesity: The contribution of genome-wide complex trait analysis.” The study used DNA for unrelated individuals and software called Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) to estimate the total additive genetic influence due to common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on whole-genome arrays, in an effort to better understand “missing heritability” of BMI in adults. Participants were from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). The results found that 37% of the twin-estimated heritability was the result of multiple common SNPs, which is probably indicative of strong genetic influence of adiposity in childhood.
Kerri Boutelle, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry in the Eating Disorders Treatment and Research Program at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She is also the Director of Behavioral Services at the Weight and Wellness Clinic. Dr. Boutelle's research focuses on parenting children to reduce weight, parent and child skills for reducing binge eating, and epidemiological work regarding adolescents who have successfully lost weight. She is a co-author of a study recently published in the journal Pediatrics that evaluated a self-help treatment program for overweight children and their parents. The study, “Guided self-help for the treatment of pediatric obesity” (Boutelle KN, Norman GJ, Rock CL, et al. April 2013; E-pub ahead of print) looked at 50 overweight or obese children ages 8 through 12 and their parents. The program included 12 visits over 5 months and found that the guided self-help program showed initial efficacy in decreasing BMI for children in the program.
Simone Pettigrew, PhD, is the Director of the Health Promotion Evaluation Unit at the University of Western Australia. Dr. Pettigrew holds a joint appointment between the UWA Business School and the School of Sports Medicine, Exercise, and Health. Her research focuses on health promotion and social marketing, especially as it relates to children and seniors. She is the co-author of a study published in the journal Appetite titled, “Investigating parents' food-provision behaviours via the sensitization method.” (Pettigrew S, Pescud M. 2013;65:117–124). The study investigated nutrition-related issues that affect disadvantaged families using a longitudinal design and “sensitization,” which is a combination of self-introspection, memory work, observation, individual interviews, and focus groups. It was applied to child obesity as experienced in low socioeconomic families to gather data about parents' food provision attitudes and behaviors.
Benjamin G. Gibbs, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Brigham Young University. Dr. Gibbs is the head of a study published in the journal Pediatric Obesity titled “Socioeconomic status, infant feeding practices and early childhood obesity.” (Gibbs BG, Forste R. April 2013; E-pub ahead of print). Utilizing a nationally representative longitudinal survey [Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B)] of early childhood with 8030 participants, Gibbs and Forste examined how breastfeeding practices and the early introduction of solid foods, as well as sending an infant to bed with a bottle, affect the relationship between social class and early childhood obesity relative to other maternal characteristics such as BMI, age at birth, smoking, depression, and day care use. Among other data, the study found that infants fed formula for the first 6 months were approximately 2.5 times more likely to be obese at 24 months of age than infants predominantly fed breast milk.
Emily Oken, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the influence of nutrition during pregnancy and childhood on maternal and child health. Dr. Oken co-authored a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association titled, “Effects of promoting longer-term and exclusive breastfeeding on adiposity and insulin-like growth factor-I at age 11.5 years: A randomized trial.” (Martin RM, Patel R, Kramer MS, et al. 2013;309:1005–1013). The study looked at 31 Belarusian maternity hospitals and their clinics and a total of 17,046 breastfeeding mother-infant pairs enrolled between 1996 and 1997. Participants were randomized into one of two groups—usual practices and breastfeeding promotion intervention. Between January, 2008, and December, 2010, 13,879 of the participants received follow-up with a median age of 11.5 years. The conclusion of the study found that the intervention, which improved the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding, did not prevent overweight or obesity. The authors note that breastfeeding has many advantages, although population strategies to increase the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding are unlikely to curb the obesity epidemic.
The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) and the American College of Physicians (ACP) released a free resource, “Excess Weight and Your Health—A Guide to Effective, Healthy Weight Loss,” developed specifically for healthcare professionals treating excess weight and obesity. “Excess Weight and Your Health—A Guide to Effective, Healthy Weight Loss” is a combination of a 32-page guidebook and DVD that provides healthcare professionals with a mechanism to introduce the topic of weight into their practices. From an in-depth look at weight to information on today's latest weight-loss options, this resource provides viewers and readers with a thorough examination of excess weight and obesity, and its effect on health. To learn more about the guidebook and DVD, visit www.obesityaction.org/oacacpdvd/.
Inês Barroso, PhD, is Joint Head of Human Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and leader of the Metabolic Disease Group. Dr. Barroso's team uses genetic and genomic approaches to understand the etiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease, focusing in particular on type 2 diabetes and obesity. The team is also part of the UK10K project, which is exploring all the genes of 1000 children with severe obesity in whom a diagnostic mutation has not been found. She is a co-author of a recent study published in Nature Genetics titled, “Genome-wide SNP and CNV analysis identifies common and low-frequency variants associated with severe early-onset obesity.” (Wheeler E, Huang N, Bochukova E, et al. April 2013; E-pub ahead of print.) The study found that some children will be obese because of severe mutations, but that others may have a combination of severe mutations and milder acting variants that in combination contribute to their obesity.
Karen Campbell, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at the Deakin University of Australia. She is also a Public Health Research Fellow in the Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research (C-PAN). Her research focuses on the behavioral and environmental influences on eating, sedentary behaviors, and physical activity in infants and children. She is the lead author of a study published in Pediatrics titled, “A parent-focused intervention to reduce infant obesity risk behaviors: A randomized trial.” (Campbell KJ, Lioret S, McNaughton SA, et al. 2013;131:652–660). The study utilized a cluster randomized controlled trial of 542 parents and their infants, mean age 3.8 months at the recruitment stage. Parents were offered six 2-hour dietitian-delivered sessions over 15 months that included dealing with diet, physical activity, and TV viewing. The study concluded that the intervention reduced sweet snack consumption and TV viewing in 20-month-old children.
Paul Dimitri, PhD, is Director of Research and Innovation at Sheffield Children's Hospital at Sheffield University (UK) and Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer. Dr. Dimitri's research focuses on the relationship between fat and bone in children and the development of novel imaging methods of bone in children and adults. He is one of a team of researchers that has received a grant of £625,000 (US $955,513) to study whether obesity causes a lack of vitamin D in children and adults. The study is to last 6 months and will compare blood and urine samples in approximately 350 individuals between the ages of 8 and 77. The grant was awarded by the Department of Health through their Policy Research Programme.
