The University of Iowa College of Public Health has secured a 200-thousand dollar grant to work with the Muscatine school district to cut down on the number of kids who’re too fat. Epidemiology professor Linda Snetselaar says Muscatine has been among the many schools that have seen the number of overweight kids increase — and they hope to reverse the trend. She says they’ll spend about 18 months working with the school district to brainstorm and come up with ideas to put some details with ideas they already have.
While the goal is to make kids healthier, Snetselaar says they aren’t yet set weight loss goals. Snetselaar says they haven’t yet gotten that specific, and that will probably come as the have more discussions on what they want to do to show that they’ve made a difference. Snetselaar says they chose Muscatine for the city’s attitude and past work on projects with the U-of-I.
She says it just seems like a community where everyone is excited about looking at what they can do differently to change things from a health point of view. Snetselaar says the fate of kids who remain obese should be enough to make them take part. She says the lifespan is going to be shortened for the younger generation compared to the generation of our parents (due to obesity). She says that’s pretty sobering. The grant for the program is from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.