Clinical Interventions to Prevent Childhood Overweight

Harvard University: Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity

Topics:
Nutrition & Physical Activity for Youth | Obesity & Overweight

Pediatricians and family practice doctors in Maine and Massachusetts are participating in two collaboratives to improve primary care practice to prevent childhood overweight. One is the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative, a joint initiative of the Maine-Harvard Prevention Research Center, the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Maine Center for Public Health. The other collaborative, Healthy Care for Healthy Kids Collaborative, is a joint initiative of the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Twelve sites in Maine and 18 sites in Massachusetts are participating. The participating practice teams in Maine and Massachusetts (which include doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, and medical assistants) are being trained to use body mass index (BMI) percentiles to document risk for overweight. They are also receiving training on how to motivate parents to help their children change selected behaviors: reduce television viewing, reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, increase physical activity, and increase fruit and vegetable consumption.

The center’s faculty and staff participate in the leadership of both collaboratives and are helping them develop intervention strategies and materials as well as evaluation methods and tools appropriate to the two populations and different clinical settings, and consistent with the specific behavioral objectives.

Read case study of this intervention.

 

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