Coordinated Approach To Child Health
If there was any skepticism in the room about the need for additional focus on ways to combat childhood obesity, Jo Ambrose may have extinguished it with one statistic.
“Seventy percent of our young people exceed the daily recommended intake of fat,” she told school administrators and observers Feb. 11 at the Catholic Center. More than 100 participated in training Ambrose led on the “Coordinated Approach to Child Health,” which was developed by the University of Texas School of Public Health.
Known by its acronym – CATCH – the program emphasizes the need for a healthy lifestyle to improve living and learning with four core components – nutrition, physical activity, health education and family/community involvement.
Among its most enthusiastic proponents is Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle, an Indianapolis native and University of Indiana graduate who attended the session and talked about his support through the Jared Foundation he founded almost a decade ago.
“This means a lot to me to be here,” Fogle said. “I started the Jared Foundation as a way to fight childhood obesity in 2006, to try to help kids going down the same path as myself.”
Fogle recounted how he found himself, in 1998, the victim of poor nutritional choices he’d made since grade school. He weighed 425 pounds and had a 60-inch waist. “I lived next to a Subway,” he explained. “I started eating there twice a day from the low-fat menu, and I started walking, and I lost 245 pounds in a year. I got my life back on track.”
Fogle said he’s excited about CATCH because of what it can mean to today’s young people. “If I was exposed to CATCH at a young age,” he said, “I would have gone down a much healthier path in my life. It is really important.
“We have a huge opportunity to influence hundreds of thousands of kids in a positive way with CATCH,” Fogle said. “This will be taken nationwide.”
Russell Traylor, executive director of the Jared Foundation, told the group that he and Fogle had just returned from setting up a pilot program in 10 Las Vegas-area schools. “Jared’s heart is in helping kids keep from going down the same path he did,” Traylor said. “We picked CATCH because we learned that teachers have enough to do already,” he continued. “It doesn’t add anything; it just modifies things you’re already doing.”
Jeff Troxel represented the local Subway franchise owners who provided major support for the CATCH training, which drew teachers and administrators from Catholic schools in the Dioceses of Evansville and Owensboro; public schools in Henderson County, Ky., and the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp.; and observers from a number of agencies, including the Wellborn Foundation, the YMCA and the Evansville Parks and Recreation Department.
One example of how CATCH can help families improve their nutritional choices is the development of the GO, SLOW and WHOA food categories. After learning about the foods in each category, families strive to eat more GO than SLOW foods, and more SLOW than WHOA foods.
For more information on CATCH, visit www.msdcenter.org. For more information on the Jared Foundation, visit www.jaredfoundation.org.
