By Anne L. Bryant
7/13/04 -- There are, I suppose, many things I feel passionately about. They include my family, of course, along with public education, school board leadership, and the schoolchildren of America. But I am really worried about 9 million of these students.
The following questions are aimed at you, the readers of School Board News, and particularly those of you -- my contemporaries -- who are 50 or older:
• Do you remember the food pyramid in school? A hint: It was usually posted in the cafeteria or a classroom.
• Did you have at least three P.E. classes a week? Or for some of us jocks, did you participate in one, two, or even three sports every year?
• Did you walk to school? to town? Did you walk anywhere? (In my day, cars were a privilege, not a 16-year-old's birthright.)
• Was there a McDonald's or other fast food restaurant on every corner, and did you have the allowance or earning power to access it?
• Was television a special privilege, allocated carefully after homework was done?
If your answers were yes, yes, yes, rarely, and yes, then your childhood mirrors mine.
But this is not what children today experience. And it's leading to a major national crisis. Our children are growing up fat.
Yes, I used the politically incorrect word. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses the term "overweight" when talking about children and adolescents. CDC considers a child or adolescent overweight if he or she has a body mass index for the child's age equal to or above the 95th percentile.
Being an overweight child is known by the medical community to be dangerous. Fat is more subjective and also has different cultural, economic, and social connotations. But overweight children are killing their own chances for a healthy, academically, economically, and socially successful life.
The facts are scary: Children who are overweight can suffer from a variety of health problems, including, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea.
Approximately 50 percent of overweight children will become obese adults, which increases their risk for serious health problems, such as heart disease and stroke.
Type 2 diabetes has become increasingly prevalent among children and adolescents. A CDC study estimates that one-third of all U.S. children will develop this disease in their lifetime.
Experts point to the decrease in daily physical activity and unhealthy eating habits among youths as the major culprit in the obesity epidemic.
Recent studies by CDC indicate that only 38.5 percent of 9 to 15-year-olds engage in organized physical activity.
The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools found that only 2 percent of school-age children meet the recommended minimum of daily food group servings specified in the Food Guide Pyramid. Twenty-one percent of children ages 9 to 13 drink three or more servings of soft drinks every day.
The most recent School Health Policies and Programs Study reports that the percentage of schools that require physical education for students decreases significantly from fifth grade (50.4 percent) to sixth grade (32.2 percent).
A small percentage of school districts have nutrition requirements for foods served in school. Only 19.4 percent require fruits and vegetables, and 23.1 percent prohibit junk foods on their a la carte menus during breakfast or lunch.
That's the data, but even more important, overweight children are often teased, socially ostracized, and made to feel less competent, and therefore, less confident. Healthy students make better learners. Overweight children not only tend to become obese adults, but these adults are taxing our health care system.
Schools did not create the childhood obesity crisis. But schools can either contribute to it or help to end it. Here at NSBA, we have been partnering with CDC for 16 years, and, quite frankly, we have become a leading organizational resource on children's health issues.
Brenda Greene and her able staff in NSBA's School Health Programs Department have worked tirelessly over this past decade to bring information on nutrition, physical activity, HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, tobacco, and many other school health issues to school board members across the nation.
The School Health Programs Department offers a variety of information and services through our website, including the School Health Resource Database, which contains nearly 3,000 sample policies, articles, training tools, and other items; School Health Programs "101 Packets," which provide general overviews of selected topics; and a variety of updates, special announcements, and Web links on school health issues.
We are currently completing a tool to help school board members and administrators assess district-level policies that promote physical activity and healthy eating. The intent is to help school districts plan improvements and set priorities. The tool will be distributed to National Affiliate school districts and Federation Members and will be posted online.
So what can school boards do about the growing childhood obesity crisis? Here are a few recommendations:
• Work collaboratively with the community to identify health priorities. Examples of potential partners include the local health department, social service agencies, and voluntary organizations like the American Cancer Society and American Lung Association.
• Establish a school health advisory council to provide broad-based input on how schools can strengthen their policies and programs to improve health knowledge and outcomes. Such councils are mandated in Texas and several other states.
• Establish policies that demonstrate the school board's commitment to health, including staff wellness programs, so employees can become effective role models for children.
• Support parent education programs to ensure that parents and schools provide consistent information and support to children.
• Ask administrators to report on their successes in addressing and improving student well-being, in addition to the reports they must submit on academic programs and test scores.
• Be role models yourselves.
It's also important for Federation Members to become involved with the nationwide initiative, Action for Healthy Kids, which was formed to promote sound nutrition and physical activity in schools. This organization has teams in every state, and we've encouraged our state school boards associations to make sure they are represented.
Some of these teams, as well as state legislators, state health and agriculture officials, and other advocates, have been effective in pushing for legislation imposing school health mandates on schools. School board leaders who react negatively to such mandates are portrayed in the press as not caring about children and health.
School board leaders need to get involved in these conversations early, so they can work to promote effective goals and strategies on children's health issues that reflect local control -- without the need for new laws and mandates.
School board members should find out what is going on in their states to address the childhood obesity issue and become part of the dialogue.
In the end, the programs and policies you establish might not affect the 9 million children who are overweight today. But you could have an impact on the 44 million who are at risk of becoming overweight -- and you could give your district's children a better shot at a healthy life.
This past year, I traveled to five European cities -- Vienna, Paris, and three in Croatia. In every airport, city, and town, I looked at schools and playgrounds. I saw children running, jumping, and playing outside, and I did not see a single overweight child in 14 days.
I also visited many cities, airports, and schoolyards in the United States over the past year and was depressed by the number of very overweight children I saw -- often accompanied by overweight parents.
While some obesity is caused by disease, most of it is caused by a lack of knowledge and the motivation to take steps toward a healthier life. That's a national crisis.