State launching childhood obesity prevention programs in New Bedford, Fitchburg

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has been awarded a $1.7 million federal grant to launch pilot programs in New Bedford and Fitchburg to fight obesity in children ages 2 to 12. The four-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is aimed at combining proven clinical and community-based obesity programs for the greatest effect on children’s health.

“I’m delighted that our federal partners have recognized the ground-breaking work that’s been underway at the community level to fight childhood obesity in Massachusetts,” Governor Deval Patrick said in a press release. “This generous award will allow us to take these innovative partnerships to a whole new level to continue that fight.”

Obesity prevention programs have long been focused either at a doctor’s office or in a community setting, such as a school, said Dr. Elsie Taveras, director of a weight management clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston and assistant professor of population medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. But obesity is a community-wide issue.

Doctors “are so often limited by what we can do with patients when they come to see us,” said Taveras, who will lead the clinical side of the grant effort. “The reality is that we send those children out to communities that make the sustainability of those changes difficult.”

One goal is to find ways that physicians and community workers can be most effective despite their limited time and resources. For example, she said, doctors could provide training to people who work with low-income families in the federal nutrition program commonly referred as WIC. Community health workers could serve as liaisons between doctors’ offices, schools, and families, she said. And programs like Planet Health, developed by the Harvard School of Public Health, a partner on the grant, could be implemented more broadly to incorporate lessons on exercise and nutrition into classrooms, she said.

“We know the serious lifelong health impacts that can result from childhood obesity,” said Department of Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach in the release. “This new funding is a valuable opportunity for us to partner with nationally-recognized academicians and researchers to develop new and effective methods to fight the problem.”

The two communities were chosen because they have some childhood obesity programs in place already. In both, the rate of children who are overweight or obese is higher than the state average.

Massachusetts will join the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and San Diego State University in the federal program, with the goal of sharing the results nationally come 2015.

Taveras also will be part of a panel of presenters Friday at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual conference being held in Boston this weekend. Their message will be a challenge to physicians: End the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation. Taveras said she believes it’s possible. “I’m an optimist,” she said.

Taveras said programs like the state’s, which work across various sectors of a community, will be critical.

“It’s a big goal,” she said. “There’s a role for everyone, and in order to make large strides in preventing obesity and reducing the rates that we see, I think everybody is going to have to look for their role.”