By Tricia Pursell
The number of overweight children in central Pennsylvania is greater than both the state and national averages.
So, local health officials are in strong support of first lady Michelle Obama’s passion to educate and motivate America to fight childhood obesity. She will launch a campaign today to target the growing problem that medical experts say will cause the current generation to have a shorter lifespan than the previous generation.
“This is the first time in history that that has transpired,” said Dr. William Cochran, vice chairman of the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital on the Geisinger campus in Danville. He has also served as the director of the hospital’s pediatric weight management program for the past 15 years. The multi-disciplinary program focuses on changing the child and family’s lifestyle in relation to nutrition and physical activity.
Forty-two percent of the children coming through the doors of the Geisinger Health System are overweight or obese, Cochran said.
The rate of pediatric obesity in central Pennsylvania exceeds the national average, he added.
“That’s because kids are very sedentary and are consuming a lot more calories than they should be,” Cochran said. Physical education programs in schools are being downsized, and more and more kids are buying meals at school that aren’t necessarily healthy and are often high in salt and fat content.
People in central Pennsylvania also eat a lot more fried food than average, Cochran said. And though many would believe that living in a rural area would increase opportunities to exercise, the opposite is actually happening.
Children are going home, and then have nowhere to go, he said. They watch television and spend countless hours on the computer.
“At this point, only about 25 percent of all children are actually getting the recommended amount (one hour a day) of vigorous physical activity,” Cochran said.
Thirty-two percent of children in Pennsylvania are overweight. Twenty years ago, Cochran said, that number was only about 5 percent.
Obese children then “stuck out like a sore thumb,” he said. But now, with 70 percent of parents obese themselves, they don’t even see their child’s obesity as a problem.
“What we perceive as normal has changed dramatically,” he said.
Pediatric obesity is associated with numerous health problems, Cochran said. In his clinic, more than 60 percent of the children have insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes, typically not diagnosed until adulthood, has become more frequently found in kids. Approximately 45 percent of the obese children have hypertension and high cholesterol, and about 15 percent have liver disease.
In addition, childhood obesity predisposes adults to increased problems of heart disease.
“You start laying down plaque in childhood,” Cochran said.
With some help from state funding, Rich Hess, director of the Middlecreek Area Community Center in Beaver Springs, has been able to implement exercise programs targeting children and youths.
Though a $380,000 grant, which began trickling into the center in 2007, was mainly to help the center focus on after-school mentoring programs, Hess had a passion to include an exercise component to target the prevalence of overweight youths and teens.
The youth and teen fitness programs include kickball, football and “anything to keep them moving,” Hess said. While the number of kids involved in the program varies from week to week, Hess said there has been interest in the games that are offered.
The MACC also received $7,500 last year to purchase equipment.
Hess said the key to the problem lies with parents.
“What it takes is for parents to have their kids go outside and do something,” he said. “You don’t see kids outside playing anymore. Show kids you can do fun, active things.”
“There’s no one group that’s going to fix it,” Cochran added. “In order to address this, this is going to have to involve the individual, family, community, churches, school and government, as well as corporate America, the health system and the insurance companies. If we don’t do it, then we’re just looking at people’s health getting worse and worse, shorter life spans and an increasing cost of health care.”
