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davis_squareYesterday's Wall Street Journal (5/10/07) had an interesting front-page article about "Shape-Up Somerville", an innovative program to fight childhood obesity.
Some excerpts
Most people think the battle against obesity takes willpower. But the town of Somerville knows it takes the will of an entire community.
Sparked by a desire to curb childhood obesity, this town of 78,000 has undergone a subtle yet dramatic transformation in the past five years. Restaurants have switched to low-fat milk and smaller portion sizes. The school district has nearly doubled the amount of fresh fruit at lunch. The town, just outside Boston, has repainted crosswalks to get more people walking to work or school.
The numbers suggest it works. During the 2003-04 school year, Somerville schoolchildren gained less weight than children in two nearby communities used as a control group, according to a report published today in the medical journal Obesity. The difference was statistically significant and translates into preventing about a pound of excess weight gain among children who lean toward the heavy side, the report says.
The Somerville study is believed to be the first controlled experiment demonstrating the value of a community-wide effort.
The Somerville program...didn't force schoolchildren to go on diets. Instead, the goal was to change their environment with small and inexpensive steps.
The goal of the researchers' Shape Up plan was to have Somerville children burn more calories through exercise and take in fewer with a healthier diet, for a total benefit of 125 calories a day.
What was missing from the program at first was a community champion, someone like C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general who railed against tobacco, or Ralph Nader in the battle over car safety. "I knew we needed a sparkplug," says Dr. Economos.
She found it in Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, a lawyer and volunteer football coach at the local high school. Mr. Curtatone says he had gained weight on the campaign trail...
Only 3% of the city's 4-square-mile territory is open space. Thousands of cars roar through Somerville every day on their way to Boston, making streets less than friendly for walkers and cyclists. Among the town's first-, second- and third-graders, 44% were already overweight or considered at risk of becoming overweight...above the national figure of about 30%.
Though Somerville isn't among the more affluent Boston suburbs, Mayor Curtatone quickly figured out that the type of changes Dr. Economos envisioned didn't cost a lot of money. For instance, many people couldn't find crosswalks because the paint had faded. The city switched to a longer-lasting reflective paint. It redeployed school crossing guards to areas where children were most likely to walk to school, and the Tufts team gave parents maps of which routes were staffed. The moves resulted in a 5% increase in the number of children who walk to school, according to Jessica Collins, a former Tufts project manager who now directs a Somerville community-health program.
...
Many of the efforts didn't even focus on children. The Tufts researchers held parent meetings in English, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and Spanish to explain the goals of the Shape Up plan. Tufts workers organized City Hall health fairs, a pedometer giveaway and a community fun run that the mayor joined. As the spirit caught on, the City Council came up with its own ideas: reimbursements on gym membership for city employees and dozens of new bike racks for schools and streets.
Twenty-one area restaurants received designation as Shape Up partners in exchange for making small menu changes such as using low- fat substitutes and offering smaller portions. Beth Ann Dahan, co- owner of Soleil Cafe & Catering, says she was happy to participate because it was good for business. "When Shape Up first started, I remember people would tell me, 'We came here because you were on the list,'" she says.
At the Somerville schools, food-service director Mary Jo McLarney decided the best way to change
Some excerpts
Most people think the battle against obesity takes willpower. But the town of Somerville knows it takes the will of an entire community.
Sparked by a desire to curb childhood obesity, this town of 78,000 has undergone a subtle yet dramatic transformation in the past five years. Restaurants have switched to low-fat milk and smaller portion sizes. The school district has nearly doubled the amount of fresh fruit at lunch. The town, just outside Boston, has repainted crosswalks to get more people walking to work or school.
The numbers suggest it works. During the 2003-04 school year, Somerville schoolchildren gained less weight than children in two nearby communities used as a control group, according to a report published today in the medical journal Obesity. The difference was statistically significant and translates into preventing about a pound of excess weight gain among children who lean toward the heavy side, the report says.
The Somerville study is believed to be the first controlled experiment demonstrating the value of a community-wide effort.
The Somerville program...didn't force schoolchildren to go on diets. Instead, the goal was to change their environment with small and inexpensive steps.
The goal of the researchers' Shape Up plan was to have Somerville children burn more calories through exercise and take in fewer with a healthier diet, for a total benefit of 125 calories a day.
What was missing from the program at first was a community champion, someone like C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general who railed against tobacco, or Ralph Nader in the battle over car safety. "I knew we needed a sparkplug," says Dr. Economos.
She found it in Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, a lawyer and volunteer football coach at the local high school. Mr. Curtatone says he had gained weight on the campaign trail...
Only 3% of the city's 4-square-mile territory is open space. Thousands of cars roar through Somerville every day on their way to Boston, making streets less than friendly for walkers and cyclists. Among the town's first-, second- and third-graders, 44% were already overweight or considered at risk of becoming overweight...above the national figure of about 30%.
Though Somerville isn't among the more affluent Boston suburbs, Mayor Curtatone quickly figured out that the type of changes Dr. Economos envisioned didn't cost a lot of money. For instance, many people couldn't find crosswalks because the paint had faded. The city switched to a longer-lasting reflective paint. It redeployed school crossing guards to areas where children were most likely to walk to school, and the Tufts team gave parents maps of which routes were staffed. The moves resulted in a 5% increase in the number of children who walk to school, according to Jessica Collins, a former Tufts project manager who now directs a Somerville community-health program.
...
Many of the efforts didn't even focus on children. The Tufts researchers held parent meetings in English, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and Spanish to explain the goals of the Shape Up plan. Tufts workers organized City Hall health fairs, a pedometer giveaway and a community fun run that the mayor joined. As the spirit caught on, the City Council came up with its own ideas: reimbursements on gym membership for city employees and dozens of new bike racks for schools and streets.
Twenty-one area restaurants received designation as Shape Up partners in exchange for making small menu changes such as using low- fat substitutes and offering smaller portions. Beth Ann Dahan, co- owner of Soleil Cafe & Catering, says she was happy to participate because it was good for business. "When Shape Up first started, I remember people would tell me, 'We came here because you were on the list,'" she says.
At the Somerville schools, food-service director Mary Jo McLarney decided the best way to change
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 02:58 pm (UTC)I wonder if Somerville has the money to follow Boston's lead and plant more trees (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/a_plan_takes_root_city_to_plant_more_than_100000_trees/). We could really use them.
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Date: 2007-05-11 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-12 05:41 am (UTC)http://nutrition.tufts.edu/research/shapeup/
And the complete WSJ article is on the Somerville Schools webpage (go to the news section - it's currently listed on the main page):
http://www.somerville.k12.ma.us
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Date: 2007-05-12 05:48 am (UTC)"There will be a lot going, and a lot to see, throughout the month of April," said Mayor Curtatone. "The city is already starting to use new, hi-tech Green Machine sidewalk sweepers that help us cover more ground with less dust and disruption – and we’re about to deploy a special graffiti removal truck that uses an environmentally friendly cleaning technology that avoids harsh chemicals and abrasives. By late April, we will have planted an additional fifty new trees and installed sixty of our popular new public benches. We also are putting in approximately one hundred new trash barrels, including an additional 'Big Belly' solar-powered trash compaction barrel of the type that are working so well in Davis Square."
Full article here: http://www.ci.somerville.ma.us/newsDetail.cfm?instance_id=1008He's going for our twelfth year as a "Tree City USA" (details on what that entails here (http://www.arborday.org/programs/treeCityUSA.cfm)).