Overweight Children
Are Problem Here, Too
By M. D. Drysdale

Students from Lindsay Mayer's 5/6-grade class do jumping jacks as part of their warm-up for Todd Keenhold's Randolph Elementary School physical education class. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

Overweight and obese children may be a national problem, but not here in Vermont, where kids still ride their bikes, eat vegetables from the farmers' market, and play outside, right?

Wrong.

In the first-ever study of weight characteristics of elementary school age children in Central Vermont, a researcher has found that the problem is nearly as important here as in the nation at large.

Even more striking, the study authored by Kristin Husher of Brookfield found that almost twice as many Randolph boys and girls are overweight than in Brookfield and Braintree, putting Randolph well above average on the overweight scale.

Two years of data, taken with the help of school nurses in the three towns, described children ages 5-12, said Husher. She designed the research and paid for it with a $21,000 grant she procured as part of her Master's degree program with St. Joseph's College of Maine, in the College of Nursing. The Boys & Girls Club of the White River Valley provided administrative support.

Husher's study showed that 12% of both boys and girls in Brookfield are overweight. In Braintree 15% of the girls and 11% of the boys, and in Randolph 25% of the girls and 22% of the boys were overweight.

The most recent national figures, Husher said, showed 16% of that age group to be overweight in 2002. That percentage had been rapidly increasing since the 1970s and may be even higher now, she acknowledged.

The trend is worrisome, she thinks, and she has scheduled a series of community forums to see what can done about it. The forums are brainstorming sessions at present, and everyone is invited, regardless of whether they have children in the schools.

Citizen Forums

Facilitated by Max Bryant of the B&G Club, the forums will be held starting this next Wednesday:

• Wednesday, Jan. 24 at the Braintree gym from 6-7 p.m.

• Wednesday, Jan. 31 at the Brookfield school, from 6-7 p.m.

• Wednesday, Feb. 21 from 6-7 at the Randolph Elementary School cafeteria.

Husher, who will provide information at the events, does not favor any particular solution, she stressed. Ideas might involve diet, physical activities and contests, equipment for life sports, healthy cooking, vending machines, or many others. It's a community process she wants to start, not any specific direction.

Why Worry?

Why is it a problem when children are overweight? There are lots of them, says Husher with her nurse's perspective—and also the perspective of having been overweight as a child ("and I didn't like it"), she said

Effects include joint problems, especially knees and hips, and arthritis in later life, more heart problems, and more cancer.

Best known is the increased risk of diabetes and the alarming symptoms that go with that. In particular, Type 2 diabetes, that used to be found almost exclusively in older people, is now being found in children, and that's being blamed on an excess of fat tissue.

Further, Husher noted, it's much more difficult to deal with adult weight problems if the person had developed obesity as a child.

It's well accepted that childhood obesity is on the increase, she noted, but not everybody agrees why that is. In Randolph, she said, she's heard reports from the Boys & Girls Club of a significant drop off in their physically active programs, just in the last two years.

"Kids are selecting less active play," she said.

On the brighter side, she said, if a child learns a healthy way of eating and exercising, it becomes "a way of life." That's why she's hoping for a good turnout at the forums.

Now that we have local data, she said "we have the opportunity—and an obligation—to get this going by the community creating iniatives."