Great News! A new childhood obesity prevention and treatment program is now open in Orlando, Florida!
The team is led by Dr. Angela Fals, Examiner.com's Childhood Obesity National Examiner, who is the Medical Director of the Center for Child and Family Wellness at Florida Hospital for Children and part of the Healthy 100 Kids program. The practice is made up of a wonderful team of pediatric health professionals specializing in healthy lifestyles for children and familes including a nutritionist, psychologist, and exercise physiologist.
This program is for children ages 6-17 years of age who are overweight or obese with a body mass index (BMI) >85% for their age, with or without medical complications such as diabetes type 2, high cholesterol or low self esteem. There are two tracks from which to choose, recommended by your child's primary care doctor -- one longer and more intensive treatment with all of the pediatric helath specialists, the second more generalized group education and workshops. Both tracks involve regular and frequent support and follow up as all families are assigned to one of the multidisciplinary healthy professionals on the team as their own personal health coach. Activites include: Exercise with Your Doc (you and your child or teen exercise together as you work out with Dr. Fals and the team), grocery store visits for practical hands-on teaching, and have fun learning with and from other famiiles about all the good things there are to eat and do!
The practice will begin seeing children and families this week. Please take look at the website for the Healthy 100 Kids program or you can call the practice directly 407-303-9200 for enrollment and further information.
The Team looks forward to working with you and your child for a healthier tomorrow!
Comments
Recently there were many posting on the importance of screening for childhood obesity in schools, at primary care physician's office etc. using BMI. BMI is a difficult measure to many and parents are unable to use BMI directly to monitor Child's growth and weight gain at present.
Last week there was lot of emphasis given to neck circumferences (NC) in the media as a measure replacing BMI.
However this conclusion was drawn simply based on significant correlation between BMI and NC. No information (scientific evidence) available between NC and health risks. You can find a strong correlation between BMI and number of TV sets at home. That doesn’t mean you can reduce BMI by promoting less number of TV/household. Furthermore, the NC also varies with gender and age. Therefore, it would be very hard to come out with threshold values for each gender and age.
Why bother using BMI or NC when we have access to weight limits charts (color coded) for each gender, age and height for children
As many parents are becoming more aware of the dangers of obesity in children they are working harder to provide more well balanced and nutritious foods as well as making an effort to prevent long periods of inactivity such as increasing outdoor time and limiting indoor activities such as watching television and playing video or computer games.
http://www.fightobesity.net/obesity-in-children.html
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