California Childhood Obesity Grants

The Health Plan of San Joaquin Health Commission has granted $135,000 to eight local obesity community wellness programs, the Stockton Record reports. The University of California Cooperative Extension received the biggest grant of $23,000 for its Healthy San Joaquin Project, which advocates for and launches activities that address childhood obesity, and encourages community leaders to adopt and promote healthy lifestyle habits.

In response to the dramatic raises in the number of Arkansas children and adolescents who are obese or at risk for overweight, the Arkansas legislature passed Arkansas Act 1220 of 2003 to Combat Obesity. This new rule included the most motivated school reforms in the nation to limit vending and competitive foods and vending items that compete with the school meals that must meet federal guidelines, e.g. foods and sodas of restricted nutritional value. It also established better standards for physical activity and food offerings. One section of the childhood obesity grant act requires all school districts to measure body mass index (BMI) for every public school student annually and report results to parents.

To get better care for the minority populations of the region, the Health Plan awarded $20,000 to the Lao Khmu Association to help launch the Children's Health, Parents Wealth Program, which aims to reduce childhood obesity and type-2 diabetes among Southeast Asians. United Cambodian families received around $20,000 to hire a part-time health educator charged with teaching bilingual nutrition classes and distributing related educational materials at three Stockton apartment complexes where residents speak mainly Cambodian. The Manteca-based also gave every child a chance organization earned a $15,000 grant to support its kid's cardiovascular, obesity and diabetes education (CODE) after-school program, which is offered at elementary schools in four local districts. The remaining grants for obesity will support a wellness program for female migrant workers, a chronic disease prevention and management initiative, efforts to promote prenatal care and eating disorder awareness programs for high school students.

Children and adolescents are granted promotions for huge amount of foods and beverages, and the majority of products advertised to them are high in calories, sugar, sodium and fat. Although a number of cultural, social and environmental factors influence children's and adolescents' risk for obesity, marketing may have an especially powerful impact on what foods and beverages they consume. This brief actually summarizes the latest research about the ubiquity of food and beverage marketing targeting youth and how marketing may affect their dietary patterns and health. It also describes national regulations to defend youth from deceptive marketing practices, outlines the changes that some food and beverage companies have made to offer healthier options and details what research is still needed to understand and limit the potential for food and beverage marketing to adversely impact young people's health. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or RWJF has been producing grant reports on its funded proposals since the year of 1996. This grant is accomplished through the Grant Results Reporting Unit, a joint effort of the Foundation's Communications and Research & Evaluation departments. Grant Results reports to add to the precision of RWJF's funding and to promote learning from past work.

• Emma Bullock
• 11/01/2009, 4:59 PM
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