Healthy children, longer lives

St. Vincent de Paul program teaches parents and kids to live healthier

PHOENIX-As people try to get healthier through fad diets, the workout of the week, or diet pills, the St. Vincent de Paul Clinic is trying to help children become healthier the right way.
 
St. Vincent de Paul hosts a free clinic for working families. To qualify for care, patients must be working and not have insurance. While helping patients, the clinic started to notice many were returning with the same problems.
 
“The medicine prescribed was only doing so much,” says Cecilia Chapman, a diabetes coordinator for the clinic. “We started to realize that a lifestyle change needed to happen, with not only the patients, but their children.”
 
This concern gave way to the development of the program,  Every Little Step Counts: Children Health In Lifestyle Decisions (CHILD). The pilot program launched in June 2006. The goals are to help high-risk children in exercising and eating right, and to help prevent childhood obesity.
 
“Childhood obesity is becoming an epidemic problem resulting in early onset of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and other problems that people three times their age are getting,” said Janice Ertl, clinic medical director. 
 
Participants are usually referred to the program by clinic staff and/or school nurses.  The classes are taught on Thursday afternoons for four weeks. The classes have about 8-12 participants, including their parents and younger siblings. During programs, participants have one-on-one consultation with dietitians, counselors, and medical staff.
 
Clinic staff monitors the children with one-on-one consultations as often as needed. The clinic’s goal is to continually monitor the progress for about five years to help develop proper, life-long eating and exercise habitats. To date, the program has had more than 170 participants.
 
However, the program’s goal is to not only educate kids, but their parents as well.
 
“Children do not have the power to buy food for their households,” says Chapman. “Parents need to set a good example for their children for a healthy lifestyle.”
 
Ertl wants parents to help set an example for their children. But, she adds, “We need their help.”
 
The clinic hopes to make its program easy and reproducible, so that it extends outside the clinic to schools in the surrounding area, allowing other children to be educated.
 
In the end the program’s goal, according to Chapman, is to make people aware of what kids are facing and of their risks.
 
 “We need to help stop childhood obesity,” says Chapman, “or else this generation might not outlive their parents.”