The CDC (Center for Disease Control) recently announced a new project, the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, aimed at reducing the incidence of childhood obesity. The need for this project is demonstrated by these statistics from the CDC website:

Obesity rates among all children in the United States

(Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey)

• Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese.
• Since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled.
• There are significant racial and ethnic disparities in obesity prevalence among U.S. children and adolescents. In 2007—2008, Hispanic boys, aged 2 to 19 years,were significantly more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white boys, and non-Hispanic black girls were significantly more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white girls.

Additionally, according to the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, 1 of 7 low income, pre-school aged children is obese.

There is an interesting report on the causes of childhood obesity on the CDC website:

“There are a variety of environmental factors that determine whether or not the healthy choice is the easy choice for children and their parents. American society has become characterized by environments that promote increased consumption of less healthy food and physical inactivity. It can be difficult for children to make healthy food choices and get enough physical activity when they are exposed to environments in their home, child care center, school, or community that are influenced by…”

The article goes on to list many factors contributing to the rise in childhood obesity, including things like not enough physical activity, advertising of less healthy foods, and the availability of less healthy foods in schools, and increasing portion sizes , to name  a few. You can read the full article here: Causes of Childhood Obesity

Please read the CDC article if you have overweight children, it may help you help them lose weight.

The CDC website introduced the project:

“CDC recently announced funding to support a four year Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, which will build on existing community efforts that focus on improving children’s nutrition and physical activity in the places where they live, learn and play. The aim of the project is to identify effective health care and community strategies to support children’s healthy eating and active living and help combat childhood obesity.

The project will target children ages 2-12 years covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides low cost health insurance to over 7 million children from working families. Rates of childhood obesity are high overall, but for minority and low-income communities in particular, they are even higher. Using innovative approaches to reach low-income and minority families to tackle childhood obesity prevents the onset of many diseases associated with childhood obesity, including type 2 diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.”

The project will run through September of 2015, after which the CDC will make recommendations about the successful strategies that may be implemented to reduce childhood obesity.

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