Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
New initiative to help obese children andoverma
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley, http://www.tomkileylaw.com, concentrates on legal issues affecting children. According to the Washington Post, a coalition of health groups and insurance companies have developed an initiative to help obese children.
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation is a joint operation between the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation. The initiative is designed to give children better access to health care and to prevent obesity. The insurance companies who participate will pay for four visits to a dietitian and four visits to doctors each year to help children and their parents know how to eat healthier and learn how to control weight. The initiative will provide the new benefit to about 1 million children in the first year, and more than 6 million within three years.
According to the article, over one-third of children in the U.S. are overweight or obese. One of the biggest problems families have is getting insurance companies to help pay for doctor visits and other medical care to deal with obesity. With this initiative, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts along with Aetna and WellPoint have signed on to help. Several companies have also joined, including PepsiCo, Owens Corning, and Paychex, to offer the benefits to children of their employees. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association, will provide assistance and monitoring of the new program.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) provides resources to families to help them learn how to eat healthy foods and live a healthy active life. The resources are on their website, http://www.aap.org/obesity/families.html?technology=1.
The AAP recommends that children:
* Eat 5 fruits and vegetables per day
* Get 1 hour of physical activity a day
* Limit TV or computer screen time to less than 2 hours a day
* Limit consumption of sugar sweetened beverages
* Eat breakfast daily
* Switch to low-fat dairy products
* Regularly eat family meals together
* Limit fast food, take out, and eating out.
* Prepare foods at home as a family
* Eat a diet rich in calcium
* Eat a high fiber diet
* Breastfeed exclusively until 6 months and maintain breastfeeding after introduction of solid food until 12 months of age
The AAP website has information for parents on nursing babies, how to cook for kids, how to provide enough calcium, healthy eating for school-age kids, healthy fast foods, what is obesity in kids, preventing high blood pressure, preventing obesity in teens, the importance of breakfast, how to read food labels, what is the BMI index and how to use that to develop healthy eating habits for children.
Another participating member in the initiative, the American Dietetics Association, http://www.eatright.org, provides resources for families. They have partnered with PepsiCo to offer a website for healthy snacking called License to Snack, http://www.licensetosnack.com. The website offers an interactive supermarket tour to make suggestions to families about healthy snacking.
Another source for healthy eating habits for families is provided by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), http://www.usda.gov. The website http://www.mypyramid.gov/kids has an interactive computer game where kids can reach Planet Power by fueling their rocket with food and physical activity. The website has posters, step-by-step guidelines, a coloring page, worksheets for kids to learn healthy foods, and classroom materials for schools.
