As Boston schoolchildren’s waistlines and city officials’ fears for their long-term health grow, a new school-based initiative to fight childhood obesity was launched.
The program, conceived by the Boston Public Health Commission and Massachusetts Department of Public Health, seeks to fight obesity in youth by requiring schools to inform parents of their child’s body mass index.
The initiative, nicknamed ‘BMI Report Cards’ by pediatricians and government agencies, is part of a larger program called Mass in Motion. Gov. Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services launched the program Jan. 8.
‘We’re helping people to eat better and move more, and fighting the epidemic of obesity, both in Massachusetts and across the country,’ Department of Public Health spokesman John Jacob said.
The program will replace the current annual height and weight checks administered to students of all grades by school nurses. Instead, the checks will only happen in first, fourth, seventh and 10th grade. The height and weight will be used to calculate the child’s BMI, which is then reported to the state and to parents, Jacob said.
Massachusetts, confronted with rising obesity rates for adolescents, has been attempting to educate the public about obesity, Boston University School of Public Health Associate Dean of Public Health Practice Harold Cox said.
‘We’ve seen a lot of data that says that a lot of adolescents are overweight in Massachusetts, and sufficient information is incredibly important to fighting this,’ he said. ‘There’s no policy that works alone. They have to work in concert.’
Cox, who works with the BPHC, said a timely rollout of materials and programs started ‘a couple of weeks ago,’ with new regulations concerning measuring BMI and reporting to parents and the state.
Along with mandatory BMI reports, state officials have also advocated to add calorie information to restaurant menus and have started a website and a blog on the state website to provide information for families to implement healthy lifestyles, Jacob said.
‘The website is a significant component to Mass in Motion, and it’s meant to be a one-stop clearing house to give people easy, low-cost ways to get more exercise and to eat better,’ Jacob said.
Critics of BMI monitoring have said drawing unwarranted attention to students’ weight could add stress to their lives or potentially cause eating disorders.
Jacob said BMI reporting is only meant to be used as a conversation starter.
‘We are not attempting to insert ourselves or be overly prescriptive into the lives of our children,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to get the word out to parents on what to do and how to deal with this.’
‘We don’t really know if this alone is going to make a big difference,’ Dr. Alan Meyers, a Boston University pediatrics professor at the School of Medicine, said. ‘This is a necessary first step, increasing awareness. For some parents, they may not have thought about [obesity].’
Meyers said he looks at obesity as a grim inevitability if nothing is done.
‘The Centers for Disease Control estimate that unless things change, a third of all children born in 2000 will be diabetic,’ he said. ‘That’s enormous, mind blowing.’
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