Increasingly alarmed by the rate of childhood obesity in the state, physicians in South Carolina are leading a new effort to focus on the problem and possible solutions.
Some efforts are working, evidenced by the childhood obesity rate hitting a plateau of around 17 percent in the past two years. But South Carolina still ranks in the bottom 10 among states. Nearly 32 percent of the state’s children are considered either obese or overweight. (National levels are 12 percent obese and 28 percent obese or overweight.)
The S.C. Medical Association’s Childhood Obesity Task Force was formed to bring together physicians, researchers, school leaders and state health officials.
At the group’s first meeting Thursday, members discussed some of the programs that are working well and how to spread those successes to other areas.
“I started practicing in 1982, and it was rare then that I saw an obese child,” said Dr. Vincent Degenhart, an anesthesiologist in Camden.
Obesity creates a multitude of health problems, including making it more difficult for an anesthesiologist to prepare a child for surgery.
As Degenhart got the task force idea rolling in recent months, he had no trouble recruiting others.
The task force “is a sign that we doctors in South Carolina are not just interested in treating diseases and illnesses,” said Dr. Janice Key, an adolescent medicine specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina.
She talked to the group about MUSC’s The Lean Team effort, which sends pediatricians, dietitians and health educators into schools and communities to talk about the need to eat right and exercise.
The Lean Team has been particularly successful at implementing school wellness councils, which schedule routine and special fitness programs in Charleston County schools.
In one effort that measured the weights of 615 participants in Lean Team programs, 76 percent of obese teachers and 40 percent of obese students lost weight in the first three months.
Others efforts have been tried in recent years, including several statewide summits on obesity put together by the nonprofit health advocacy group Eat Smart Move More South Carolina. The new task force plans to build on the progress.
“Most of the success has been at the community, grass-roots level,” said Dr. Jennifer Root of Columbia, another of the task force members. “But we don’t have another 10 or 20 years to let it bubble up. We have to boost the speed at which these grass-roots programs spread.”
The task force includes many of the people who have been working on the problem for years – Eat Smart Move More, state health departments, state school officials and USC researchers. But this effort has a more direct connection with the medical association and physicians working on the front lines. Key cited studies showing people are much more likely to acknowledge a weight problem and do something about it if their doctors talk to them about it.
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