Subscribe to the RSS feed.“There’s a growing recognition nationally that the environment is impacting the choices we make.”
This quote comes from Kate Wells, outreach director for the Heart Institute of the Cascades, and project director for Kids@Heart, a regional collaboration between advocates in central Oregon working to achieve environments more conducive for healthy living. It appears in a recent article in the Bend Bulletin, which covers the Kids@Heart program. Kids@Heart has received funding from Northwest Health Foundation, beginning with a Community-based Participatory Research grant, and following with a Public Health (Physical Activity and Nutrition) grant.
The regional effort, focusing on central Oregon, will begin with Madras. As the article says, members of the Kids@Heart collaboration believe that systemic change can only be made “through incremental progress and must start with changing the policies that govern our cities, counties and state.”
Furthermore, the article states, obesity prevention “must begin one step further back, conducting the research that will provide the data that will convince policymakers to make meaningful change.”
In Madras, the process - which can serve as an excellent example for other regions all over the nation - includes the following steps:
- Collecting body mass index data for a sample of 1,000 kids from kindergarten through high school.
- Experimenting with the sequence of lunch and recess (research has shown that recess before lunch improves eating choices and habits).
- Testing menu labeling in middle school cafeterias.
- Using software to analyze calorie consumption month-to-month.
- Working on ways to encourage commuting to school (making routes safer, educating families, etc.)
The Bend Bulletin article also reflects a growing understanding in the media that real health improvement can only be achieved when environments make the healthy choice the easy choice. As reporter Markian Hawryluk writes, “Initiatives that focus solely on identifying and intervening with overweight kids aren’t likely to be effective.” Instead he writes, advocates are turning to a more systemic approach: “looking at the environments in which kids live, hoping to remove the barriers to healthy lifestyles.”
