Feature
IU Joins the Fight Against Fat
February 13, 2007
IU researcher Lloyd Kolbe helps young Hoosiers battle obesity
To ensure Indiana's children get the best shot at healthy lives, IU professor Lloyd Kolbe has worked with Indiana's health department to create a state plan to reduce childhood obesity.
Take a look around and you'll see that Indiana is growing — and not in a good way.
The percentage of overweight and/or obese Indiana adults increased from 46% in 1990 to 62% in 2004. About 30% of Indiana's young people ages 6 to 19 are already overweight and/or obese, and the percentage of Indiana high school students who are obese increased by another 30% in the two short years between 2003 and 2005. Bottom line, today's young Hoosiers may be the first generation to live sicker and die younger than their parents.
As a leader in the fields of medicine and health, Indiana University is using its considerable resources to lead the state's fight against fat.
Leading the IU effort is Lloyd Kolbe, a professor of Applied Health Science and an internationally known expert on adolescent obesity. Kolbe works with the nation's 120,000 schools to find ways to improve student and school employee health. He has worked with Chinese health officials to address adolescent weight issues in China, and serves on the newly formed International Obesity Task Force.
In Indiana, Kolbe has been working with the state health department to develop a plan to reduce obesity. In October 2005, at the INShape Indiana State Summit on Obesity Prevention, Kolbe presented the Indiana State Plan to Reduce Obesity, which focused primarily on children's health. Now, with doctoral student Neva Cottam, Kolbe is working with the Indiana State Department of Health to analyze new school nutrition and physical activity policies adopted last September by Indiana school districts.
This work is crucial, Kolbe said, because obesity is already impairing the health of Indiana's youth.
"Our children are our future," Kolbe said. "Principally because of the obesity epidemic, our children will not be as healthy as we are. But if we could improve their health, we could improve so many other aspects of their lives."
Kolbe recognizes how daunting it will be to reduce obesity in the state, but he is optimistic about Indiana's ability to reverse the trend. "We know what to do," he says. "The question is whether we have the will to do what needs to be done." The key is not to merely treat obesity and the many diseases to which it contributes, he said, but to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
Kolbe has identified 23 policies that schools could consider to reduce obesity among young people. This is part of implementing the requirements of the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004, which all 15,000 school districts in the nation — including the 293 school districts in Indiana — were to put into action by fall semester 2006. The new law requires all local education agencies (LEAs) participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to develop local wellness policies.
"My read is that we're ready to do it," Kolbe says. "My dad quit smoking when I was 10 because he didn't want to see me smoke. I think we can apply that same phenomenon and launch something to emphasize weight loss among young people. But we all need to pitch in. We each can help by increasing our own physical activity and improving our own diets to model for our children how to maintain a healthy weight."
