Resources
Research
- Active Living Research
This national program contributes to the prevention of childhood obesity by supporting research to identify environmental factors and policies that influence physical activity, especially among children and families in minority/low-income communities. Research findings are used to promote active living – the integration of physical activity into one’s daily routine – by informing policy, influencing environmental design and more. Active Living Research is administered by the San Diego State University Research Foundation.
Active Living Research Literature Database: Access more than 450 papers that study the relationship of environment and policy with physical activity and obesity.
- Environmental Approaches to the Prevention of Obesity (separate studies, grants)
This program supports primary prevention research approaches targeting environmental factors that contribute to obesity and inappropriate weight gain in children and adults. This RFA (DK-02-021) recognizes that environmental strategies can promote healthful eating and can increase physical activity.
- GEMS 2 (separate studies, cooperative agreements)
This is a multi-center program of four studies to develop and test interventions to prevent obesity by decreasing weight gain in high-risk African American preadolescent girls. Outcomes for four studies in Phase 1 were related to feasibility. For Phase 2, two studies are testing separate interventions over a two-year period in full-scale trials of 260-300 participants per center.
- Healthy Eating Research: Building Evidence to Prevent Childhood Obesity
Healthy Eating Research supports investigator-initiated research to identify and assess environmental and policy influences with the greatest potential to improve healthy eating and weight patterns among U.S. children, especially among the low-income and racial/ethnic populations at highest risk for obesity.
- Obesity Research
This resource presents information about NIH-supported research to facilitate progress toward obesity prevention and treatment. NIH seeks to identify genetic, behavioral, and environmental causes of obesity; to understand how obesity leads to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other serious health problems; and to build on basic and clinical research findings to develop and study innovative prevention and treatment strategies.
- Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity in Primary Care Settings (separate studies, grants)
This trans-NIH RFA (HD-04-020) supports studies testing interventions delivered in primary care settings to improve dietary and physical activity behaviors of pediatric patients to prevent excess weight gain in children at risk for obesity and/or to prevent further weight gain, or to promote weight loss in children who are already obese. NHLBI funds two of the 14 projects.
- Site Specific Approaches to Prevention or Management of Pediatric Obesity
This RFA allows for investigators to submit applications designed to develop and test intervention approaches for the prevention or management of overweight in children and adolescents through age 20. The focus is on utilizing specific sites where children and adolescents can be reached through innovative overweight-prevention or weight-management interventions.
Surveillance
- Health Promotion Research Branch Obesity-Related School Environment Policy Initiative
This initiative addresses the childhood obesity epidemic by using policy-based approaches that regulate the school environment, namely a school nutrition-environment state policy classification system, and a physical education-related state policy classification system. This includes a database of coded statutory and regulatory data files of policies related to youth obesity, which provide the framework to evaluate the impact of policies on the school environment and individual behavioral outcomes presently and over time.
- Measurement of the Food & Physical Activity Environments: Enhancing Research Relevant to Policy on Diet, Activity & Weight
Cataloged in this supplement, researchers use a variety of methods to measure food and physical activity environments, including survey instruments (self-reported and observed) and methodologies such as geographic information systems.
- Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System (PedNSS)/Pregnancy Surveillance System (PNSS)
These are program-based surveillance systems that monitor the nutritional status of infants, children and women from low-income families and in federally funded maternal and child health programs. PedNSS data represent more than 7 million children from birth to age 5. PNSS data represent approximately 750,000 pregnant and postpartum women.
- Youth Risk Behavior System
This system includes national, state, and local school-based surveys of representative samples of high school students conducted every two years. The national survey provides data representative of teenagers in public and private schools in the United States. The state and local surveys provide data representative of students in public high schools in each jurisdiction.
Programs and Interventions
- Active Living by Design
This program partners with communities across the country to demonstrate how changing community design can impact and increase physical activity. Part of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, the Active Living by Design establishes novel approaches to increase activity and healthy eating through community design, public policies and communication strategies.
- The African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network (ACCORN)
This collaboration of U.S. researchers, scholars-in-training, and community-based research partners is dedicated to improving the quality and quantity of research to address weight-related health issues in African-American communities.
- Communities Creating Healthy Environments: Improving Access to Healthy Foods and Safe Places to Play in Communities of Color
This program builds state and national momentum to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity through strategic investment in those communities most affected.
- The Convergence Partnership
This collaboration of organizations have the shared goal of changing policies and environments to better achieve the vision of healthy people living in healthy places.
- HEALTHY
Conducted in 42 middle schools randomized to intervention or control, the goal of this intervention is to reduce or moderate risk for type 2 diabetes. The study focuses on reducing three modifiable risk factors related to excess body fat and blood-sugar control: BMI percentile greater than or equal to 85, indicating overweight, and levels of fasting glucose and fasting insulin indicating a breakdown in the body systems that control blood sugar.
- Healthy Eating by Design
This program aims to increase access to healthy foods for children in low-income communities and schools. Currently, 12 Active Living by Design community partnerships were selected by RWJF to test approaches for providing affordable, healthy, and appealing food options in low-income communities.
- Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities
This national program aims to help 70 communities across the country in reshaping their environments to support healthy living and prevent childhood obesity.
- Leadership for Healthy Communities: Advancing Policies to Support Healthy Eating and Active Living
This program educates state and local leaders in strategies to promote healthy eating and active living. Leaders learn about the impact of public policies on the health of children and communities. The program creates tools and materials that help leaders gain public and governmental support for preventing and addressing childhood obesity through high-impact activities, such as town-hall meetings, public hearings, workshops and trainings.
- Media-Smart Youth
This is an interactive, after-school education program designed to teach youth ages 11-13 about media influence and how it can affect their health, particularly in terms of nutrition and physical activity. Media-Smart Youth helps young people build the skills necessary to make healthy life decisions; it is a health-promotion rather than a weight-loss program.
- Salud America!
The RWJF Research Network to Prevent Obesity Among Latino Children www.salud-america.org
This national program aims to unite and increase the number of Latino scientists seeking environmental and policy solutions to address Latino childhood obesity.
- Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG) (multi-center, cooperative agreements)
This multi-center, group randomized trial of a school- and community-based physical activity intervention aims to prevent the decline in physical activity of adolescent girls. Thirty-six schools and several existing community agencies are participating in the intervention to provide skills-building, supportive environments, and opportunities for participation in physical activity during and outside of the school day.
- We Can!™ (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition!)
A collaboration among four NIH institutes, this is a fast-growing, national movement of families and communities coming together to promote healthy weight in children ages 8-13. We Can! offers parents, as well as families tips and activities to encourage improved food choices, increased physical activity and reduced screen time. It offers community groups and health professionals resources to implement programs and activities for parents and youths.
Technical Assistance and Tools
- Active Living Resource Center
This national program provides community members with technical assistance (e.g., traffic-taming tools/ideas, bike-lane design guides, etc.) for creating physically active communities, namely by making them more bicycle and pedestrian friendly.
- The National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity
The network provides leaders in the childhood obesity prevention field with focused legal research, model policies, fact sheets, toolkits, training and technical assistance to explain legal issues related to public health.
- Take Charge of Your Health: A Guide for Teenagers (Weight-Control Information Network)
This website and booklet is designed to help teenagers remember simple, small steps to maintain a healthy weight. The booklet offers basic facts about nutrition and physical activity, and offers practical tools that teenagers can use in everyday life – from reading food labels and selecting how much and what foods to eat, to replacing television time with physical activities.
- Weight-control Information Network (WIN)
This information service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney diseases, provides the general public, health professionals, the media, and Congress with up-to-date, science-based information on weight control, obesity, physical activity, and related nutritional issues.
