Childhood Obesity - Do you have an overweight child? We offer tips to help your child lose weight and get fit!

The My Overweight Child blog will help you keep informed about the latest research, findings, and resources available to parents of overweight or obese kids. There are many knowledgeable people working on the increasingly dire problem of childhood obesity - and we want to give parents a place where they can check in regularly to see the latest studies and tips available to help you help your child lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

We invite you to add your comments - if you have feedback for the blog, would like some specific topics covered, or you just want to share your experience as a parent dealing with childhood obesity.

Texas Group Helps Assess School Fitness Efforts

A nonprofit organization called Project Measure Up is working to helping schools comply with a six-part health assessment required of all Texas schoolchildren.

Don Finley reported on the "Measure Up" effort in a Nov. 22 article on mysanantonio.com:
Project Measure Up doesn't exist just to help cash-strapped school districts with personnel costs. The real goal is to have ready access to all that raw data to get a detailed picture of the county's childhood obesity problem today and what health problems those kids will face years from now, organizers say.

We can predictively tell you within a 5 percent margin of error what our cardiovascular illness is going to be in 20 years based on these children right now. And that's really important for our future planning and legislation, said Nicole Rogers, executive director of the Health Collaborative, a group of local hospitals, health agencies and charitable foundations that sponsors Project Measure Up.

Eight local independent school districts  Alamo Heights, East Central, Edgewood, Harlandale, Judson, Somerset, South San Antonio and South Side  have accepted the group's offer of free, trained volunteers to help with the tests. The three largest districts  North East, Northside and San Antonio  have not, although discussions are under way with San Antonio, Rogers said.

It's been a process of earning trust in the schools, Rogers said.

Labels: schools, texas, fitness

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Texas School District to Create to Route to School

The Allen School District in Texas is planning to re-introduce a school route that many modern-day kids aren't familiar with: a walking trail. The plan is to construct a concrete trail that joins with an existing pedestrian underpass.
"'The whole point is to reduce traffic and increase childhood health,' [Kelly McGinnis] said. McGinnis cited studies from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show a drop in children walking or biking to school and an increase in obesity rates, diabetes, asthma and other health issues."
The new trail would give kids a safe path, away from busy streets, while simultaneously reducing traffic during common drop-off and pick-up times. Read more at Courier-Gazette.com.

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Labels: schools, texas, childhood_health

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