Roundtable Discussion offers novel strategies, solutions to control childhood obesity

The battle to control the childhood obesity epidemic is being fought on many levels. It could benefit from targeted programs and funding to support and integrate worksite and school-based health promotion initiatives. An insightful Roundtable Discussion entitled "Working on the Health of Families: Where Children Fit in Worksite Health Promotion Efforts" offers novel strategies and solutions and is published in Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The Roundtable is available free on the Childhood Obesity website at http://www.liebertpub.com/chi.

"Teaching healthy practices in school is of vital importance but we all acknowledge that resource limitations often restrict what can be done there, and the engagement of businesses in support of that effort could help," says David L. Katz, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief of Childhood Obesity, Director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, and Moderator of the Roundtable Discussion. "There is an enormous opportunity to promote health with family as the basic functional unit and reach kids and teachers and adults in other worksites."

Roundtable participants included Deborah Lewison Grant, Co-Founder, FoodFight (New York, NY); Todd J. McGuire, Chief Technology Officer, incentaHEALTH, LLC (Denver, CO); Scott McQuigg, Chief Executive Officer, HealthTeacher, Inc. (Nashville, TN); Karen Voci, Executive Director, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation (Wellesley, MA); and Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, Professor, Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA).

"Schools often lack resources to implement new health-promotion programming and the business community could provide them," says Dr. Katz. "Businesses stand to get a return on investment in wellness and that could be greater when wellness engages the whole household. What happens at the worksite may, alas, stay at the worksite unless parallel programming for adults and children helps to shift the culture of a family toward health as a shared priority."