After 8 years of outreach, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has provided healthy lifestyle education to more than 21,000 third and fourth graders across the country through its Ready, Set, FIT! program to fight childhood obesity. Ready, Set, FIT! is part of the AAFP's Americans In Motion–Healthy Interventions (AIM-HI) fitness initiative and was designed to help family physicians and other healthcare professionals extend their services beyond the clinic walls. Through Ready, Set, FIT!, physicians collaborate with schools in their communities to help children develop behaviors that prevent or reduce overweight, obesity, and other chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension. As the consequences of childhood overweight and obesity began making their mark on classroom learning, AIM-HI teamed with Scholastic, the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, to create Ready, Set, FIT! for the classroom, which emphasizes the importance of physical activity, healthy eating, and emotional well-being. To help students understand how valuable these three components of fitness are to their overall health, the program encourages learning about healthy lifestyles both in the classroom and at home. Ready, Set, FIT! in-class and at-home activities are designed to educate students and their families about everyday choices they can make to be healthy. The Ready, Set, FIT! program is endorsed by the National School Boards Association and aligned with national standards to build health messages into core language arts, math, and health education. To get involved with Ready, Set, FIT!, visit www.readysetfit.org.
Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, recently spoke to the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at the Ernest M. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. The NCLR is the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. In addition to its broad advocacy programs and research about the Hispanic population, the NCLR has a Health and Nutrition program, part of the NCLR's Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation. First Lady Michelle Obama spoke about her advocacy for good health and nutrition for children and fighting childhood obesity, areas of significant interest for the NCLR. The NCLR points out that 23% of all children in the United States under the age of 18 are Latino, which is the fastest-growing segment of the American population.
Marlene B. Schwartz, PhD, was recently appointed director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. Dr. Schwartz's research focuses on how home environments, school landscapes, neighborhood, and the media shape the eating attitudes and behaviors of children. Her work has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the USDA, the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Horizon Foundation. In 2010, Dr. Schwartz cochaired the Connecticut Obesity Task Force and she also serves on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Food Bank. The Rudd Center's former director, Kelly D. Brownell, PhD, will serve as dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.
Rachel S. Gross, MD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Her research focuses on child obesity prevention and early maternal infant feeding interactions. Dr. Gross is the lead author on a study titled “Maternal depressive symptoms and child obesity in low-income urban families.” (Gross RS, Velazco NK, Briggs RD, et al. Acad Pediatr 2013;13:356–363). Dr. Gross and her team conducted a cross-sectional survey of mothers with 5-year-old children receiving pediatric care at a community health center. They examined the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and child weight status. In a study of 401 mother-child pairs, with 23.4% of mothers reporting depressive symptoms, they found that mothers with moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms were more likely to have overweight and obese children than mothers without depressive symptoms.
An article in The New York Times, entitled “Poor Children Show a Decline in Obesity Rate,” featured a CDC report of recent declines in the rate of obesity among low-income children. The CDC report focused on preschoolers 2–4 years of age with data from 12 million children who participate in federally funded nutrition programs. Data in the report came from 40 US states and territories, 19 of which reported declines in obesity rates among this cohort. “This is the first time we have this many states in the US showing a decline,” CDC Chief of Obesity Prevention and Control Heidi Blanck, MS, PhD, said in the Times article. Several more prominent researchers and experts on childhood obesity were mentioned in the article, including Tom Baranowski, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine.
Melissa Wake, MD, is a consultant pediatrician and director of research at the Center for Community Child Health at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne (Australia). She is also associate director of the Center. Her research focuses on community-based strategies in many areas, including language and literacy, hearing loss, overweight and obesity, and early mental health. Along with her coauthors, Dr. Wake published a study in PLOS ONE titled “Family and neighbourhood socioeconomic inequalities in childhood trajectories of BMI and overweight: Longitudinal study of Australian children.” (Jansen PW, Mensah FK, Nicholson JM, et al. 2013;8:e69676). The study looked at 4949 children whose BMI was measured at four biennial waves beginning at age 4–5 years in 2004. The study found that socioeconomic differences in high BMI that existed in children at age 4–5 years more than doubled by age 10–11 years.
Emma J. Boyland, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on the effects of food promotion on children's food preferences, choices, and eating behavior, especially in regard to food advertising on television, new media, and outdoor advertising. Dr. Boyland is the lead author of an article published in The Journal of Pediatrics titled “Food choice and overconsumption: Effect of a premium sports celebrity endorser.” (Boyland EJ, Harrold JA, Dovey TM, et al. 2013;163:339–343). The study looked at 181 children from the UK between the ages of 8 and 11 years. It provided various commercials for a brand of potato chips to see which had the biggest effect on the children. The study concluded that the influence of a celebrity endorser on food intake in children extends beyond his or her role in the specified endorsed food commercial and may reinforce unhealthy eating practices in children.
Stephen F. Weng, MPH, is a PhD student with the School of Community Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham (UK). He is currently working on his PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health and is affiliated with the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies and the Early Prediction and Prevention of Obesity in Children (EPPOC). Weng is the lead author of a study published in Pediatrics titled “Estimating overweight risk in childhood from predictors during infancy.” (Weng SF, Redsell SA, Nathan D, et al. 2013;132:e414–e421). The purpose of the study was to develop and validate a risk score algorithm for childhood overweight based on a prediction model in infants. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, the investigators identified seven predictors significantly associated with overweight at 3 years: gender, birth weight, weight gain, maternal prepregnancy BMI, paternal BMI, maternal smoking in pregnancy, and breastfeeding status.
Vienna McLeod is a senior at the University of Vermont (UVM) Exercise and Movement Science Program. She is currently conducting a summer research project funded by two UVM undergraduate research awards under advisement from Connie Tompkins, PhD, assistant professor of exercise physiology in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. The objective of the research, which currently depends on questionnaires and computer-based tasks, is to determine whether obesity at a young age affects the development of executive brain function of the frontal lobes. McLeod is attempting to determine whether executive dysfunction causes obesity or whether obesity is leading to executive dysfunction. McLeod hopes to continue this line of research in graduate school, potentially with the use of brain imaging.
