BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Ohio State University Extension is teaming up with researchers at Kansas State and South Dakota State universities in a project to study how to take a community approach to combat youth obesity in limited-income neighborhoods.
The project, called “Ignite: Sparking Youth to Create Healthy Communities,” will test strategies to help 6th- through 8th-graders identify and overcome barriers to eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and becoming more active.
“Since 1980, childhood obesity has tripled,” said Susan Zies, OSU Extension educator in family and consumer sciences in Wood County and Ohio’s collaborator on the project. OSU Extension is the outreach arm of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
“It’s the result of eating too many calories and not getting enough physical activity, so we want to focus on that,” Zies said. “Are there things out there that are promoting good eating habits and promoting physical activity? What are the barriers that stand between kids and healthy food choices and being more active? What can the community do to encourage healthier lifestyles?”
In the project, which received funding in late 2012, researchers in Ohio, South Dakota and Kansas have each chosen two limited-income communities to work with. The communities all will get $5,000 to spend on health-based initiatives every year for four years. Researchers are not identifying the communities to protect the integrity of the research.
In each state, one of the communities will serve as a control, implementing current proven strategies to encourage healthy choices, while the other community will form a coalition made up of parents, children and a variety of community leaders to make decisions on how to tackle the issue. At the end of the study, the efforts between communities will be compared to see if the community/academic partnership made a difference.
“The uniqueness of this project is the community participatory research aspect of it,” said Ryan Leone, Ohio’s project manager for the effort. “It’s fairly novel. Most people would come in, do their study, then leave. This project is designed to create lasting change, and it’s especially focused on youth, getting them to take the lead to help the community design its own intervention. And if it’s successful, it can be done all over the country.”
Kansas State has the leadership role in the five-year project, funded with a $2.5 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Although not part of the study design, the communities in the three states ended up differing somewhat in their demographics: Ohio’s communities are primarily African-American, while in Kansas they are primarily Latino, and in South Dakota, Native American.
Among the first steps in the project was an environmental assessment. “Through these assessments, we found lots of opportunities for growth” in the Ohio communities, Leone said.
Over the course of the five-year project, the communities will be able to measure their progress and make adjustments to improve access to healthy foods and activities and encourage healthy choices.
Leone is especially excited that children will have a seat at the table.
“It’s all about the youth, getting them involved,” Leone said. “Kids tend to look to other kids -- they listen to their peers. I’m hoping that by getting people involved in the study, designing it themselves, we’ll see some results.”
For more on the project, see information from K-State Research and Extension at http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/news/story/KState_grant092512.aspx.
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Susan Zies
419-354-9050
zies.1@osu.edu
Ryan Leone
419-354-9050
leone.92@osu.edu