Beats this week:

1) In September you will begin to see health clinics in Targets throughout Chicago and the suburbs. This announcement follows the expansion of health clinics in CVS and Walgreens stores across the country. 

2) Earlier this week, community health centers received some exciting news: the Corporation for National and Community Service decided to fully fund the Community HealthCorps at the requested level for the very first time. With uninsured patient visits up by 21% at community health centers, the $6 million in funding for Community HealthCorps will help to meet this intense demand for care.

3) Celebrity chefs recently took on a challenge: they ate lunch at public schools in the DC area. Through this experience they all came to the same conclusion: schools lunches lacked nutrition, variety and taste. Now months later, these chefs are taking action by teaching cooking classes to students and parents and getting on the front lines for the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Initiative.

4) We are a little late to the news on this one but last month Australian researchers released a study that found a link between diabetes and family history. The study was fairly basic: they took families with and without history of diabetes and overfed them. The results were very interesting, with those with a family history gaining more weight on average and demonstrating a greater resistance to insulin.

5) This week Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of $83.9 million in grants to support the expansion of health information technology. Erie was thrilled to be among the list of grant recipients, accepting on behalf of the Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services.

Beats this week:

1) President Obama is planning a bipartisan summit on health care on February 25. Making the announcement during a pre-Super Bowl interview, Obama pledged that he wanted to work with Republicans to pass health care reform but would not agree to throw out the entire health care reform bill and start over.

2) As reported by Beats Per Minute last week, the First Lady Michelle Obama is leading an initiative to fight childhood obesity. The campaign, called “Let’s Move,” was kicked off this week.

3) Meanwhile, at the state level, the Illinois General Assembly allowed Governor Pat Quinn to delay sharing the details of his budget plan until March 10.  Many social service organizations across the state are bracing for another tough Spring and Summer of budget delays.

4) With health care reform stalled, hospitals nationwide continue to struggle as billions of dollars in medical bills go unpaid.

5) A study recently released by International Communications Research found that up to $9 billion could be raised for states with a $1 per pack tax on cigarettes. This report concluded that most Americans would support this increase over other tax increases or budget cuts.

Courtesy of Huffington Post

Fast food, as well as the large variety of sugary and fattening junk food that adorns grocery store shelves, has played a large part in the child obesity epidemic witnessed over the years within the U.S.  It might come as a surprise, then, that a study recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that child obesity rates have actually slowed in growth over the past several years. Despite these results, there is little reason to celebrate.  We still live in a nation where a third of our children are obese and in African American and Latino communities, the number reaches nearly 50%.

In the State of the Union Address given by President Obama last Wednesday, he mentioned a national movement to address the issue of childhood obesity, which will be led by the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama recently announced her initiative to combat childhood obesity at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C., where she was discussing the issue.

As a mother herself, she said she is familiar with the business of being a working parent and struggling to feed her family healthy, balanced meals.  Even though it’s easier to eat cheaply and less healthy in a rough economic climate, Mrs. Obama stated the importance of good nutrition, especially for children.  The new childhood obesity initiative, which will launch next month, will employ greater communication between the federal government and local schools, businesses and non-profits on the importance of healthy eating. These communications will cover a variety of topics, such as increasing the number of schools where students can have access to healthy foods, techniques to provide children with more opportunities to be physically active and ensuring that low-income communities have access to healthy food options. 

Erie Family Health Center has been dealing with the child obesity head on.  Erie’s B.A.L.A.N.C.E curriculum (Building Lives Around Nutrition-Centered Education) aims to provide physical and nutritional education to elementary-aged children at Erie’s school-based sites.   This program allows students at both Ryerson and Henson Elementary Schools, where high levels of childhood obesity exist, to have the opportunity to learn about ways to eat and live healthy lives through fun games and activities.  Parents are also given information on healthy nutrition and exercise habits, which allows children to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and put it into practice at home. 

If Mrs. Obama’s program proves to be successful, it might not be long before we see other programs, like Erie’s B.A.L.A.N.C.E. program, springing up at the community level.  One thing is for certain, though: becoming a healthier nation goes far beyond health care reform – it comes down to our day-to-day choices about how to treat our bodies.  If we learn to make healthy choices, especially as children, then we will be on our way to living healthier, happier lives.