Shaping up to prevent childhood obesity
Economos started a program to get kids exercising and prevent childhood obesity. (Credit: susieq3c. Some rights reserved.)
Christina Economos of Tufts University took the small city of Somerville, Massachusetts and put it on a program to prevent the spread of childhood obesity.
Christina Economos: And we really went at it from every aspect of community living. The school environment – before school, during school, after school.
The program was called “Shape Up Somerville.”
Christina Economos: Communities, working with ethnic minority groups, the home environment, engaging politicians, the restaurants, health care providers. So everyone was doing their part to prevent obesity in this population.
The goal was to get children a recommended 1 to 2 hours of exercise per day, through walking to school, playing and sports.
And it worked.
Christina Economos: We saw in the intervention community that there was a slower or lower amount of weight that was gained during one school year. The kids were gaining weight as they should, to grow, but they weren’t gaining unnecessary weight. So we prevented about a pound of weight gain just over an eight month period.
Economos said an overweight child is 70% more likely to become an overweight adult.
Christina Economos: All of this is still going on in Somerville, and in fact, they have expanded the efforts. They’re doing terrific. They’re really a model community that other communities in the U.S. are looking toward.
Speaking on a panel for Childhood Obesity and Nutrition at the 2008 AAAS meeting, Economos said, “We have engineered physical activity out of our lives.”
Christina Economos: We have a responsibility to take care of everyone in this country, so they can have a vibrant, active life, particularly children. So as human beings, we need to take a look at this and say, there are disparities. why are they there, and what can we do to eliminate those disparities.
Christina Economos on preventing childhood obesity
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Boca Raton FL based MonkeeDo.com is helping fight the childhood obesity epidemic.
Monkee Do sells cute monkey shirts for infants, toddlers, youths and adults based on the “Don’t just monkey see, Monkee Do” theme. A portion of their proceeds goes to The Children’s Fitness Foundation.
Monkee Do will be launching a new item this month that will raise awareness and funds for a variety of childhood obesity foundations.
“Do a little bit and help kids get fit”
Monkee Do thanks you for your support.
I believe whoever is doing and helping with the program should be rewarded because they are helping the future generation of children in America. I believe it is great what you are doing. Keep up the good work.