Community Leaders Launch Collective Effort To Fight Child Obesity In Central Indiana

An alliance of civic, health, business and education leaders have committed to improving the health of Hoosier children by launching Jump IN for Healthy Kids, community-wide initiative to reduce childhood obesity in Central Indiana.

“Every state, every community is fighting this epidemic,” says Jack Phillips, president & CEO of Roche Diagnostics who co-chairs Jump IN with Marion County Public Health Department Director Virginia A. Caine, M.D. “Locally, many organizations have fine individual efforts under way,”  he said, “but what we’ve learned from studying areas where childhood obesity is dropping – places as different as Mississippi, New York City, California, West Virginia and Philadelphia – is that we need comprehensive, sustained and coordinated action. Good intentions and hard work are not enough unless we all work together. We must be guided by good data and metrics and remain focused on success.”

Dr. Caine emphasized the need to involve all sectors of the community, a lesson learned from those communities that have reduced childhood obesity rates while the rest of the country has seen those rates move in the wrong direction.

“Schools are essential to these efforts,” she said, “but schools can’t do it alone. We have to engage families, employers, health care providers, businesses, neighborhood associations, nonprofits and faith-based organizations as well. Jump IN is designed to involve the whole community because we all must work together to address the problem.”

After 18 months of research and planning, Jump IN for Healthy Kids was created by a group of civic and business leaders. They say they hope it will be the catalyst for evidence-based best practices that will measurably improve the health of children in Indiana.

As Ron Gifford, CEO of Jump IN, explained, “Tackling a problem as complex as childhood obesity requires nothing short of a change in culture. Experience has shown that this takes a shared agenda and strategy, coordinated action, transparency and accountability, and a backbone organization to support the initiative. Jump IN is designed to be that backbone – serving as a convener, connector and facilitator to ensure that community efforts are aligned and using best practices. There is too much at stake for us not to succeed.”

Underscoring the Need
Recent data support Jump IN leaders’ call to action.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that, in 2012, approximately one in three children and teens were overweight or obese,” said Caine. “Obese teenagers are more likely to develop prediabetes, a condition which puts them at high risk for developing diabetes and other health problems.”

Other measures documented by the CDC and other sources underscore the need for action:

• Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. Minority and low-income children are disproportionately affected.
• Sixty to 65 percent of obese children will grow up to become obese adults.
•  Medicaid data show that annual health care costs for an obese child average $6,730, nearly three times the average cost for all children. Indiana spends $1.6 billion per year in overall obesity-related medical costs – and the figure is rising.
• Nationwide, estimates of obesity-related costs for decreased productivity top $225 billion per year.

Next: Collective Action
Funded initially by its founding corporate, foundation and nonprofit partners, Jump IN will focus its efforts on school-based initiatives, employer wellness, public education and awareness, training of health professionals, shared policy agendas and integrated, community-based health pilots. Working through multiple task forces aligned with these focus areas, Jump IN will engage a broad and diverse array of community groups to promote data-driven strategies to achieve its goals.