Houston Area Neighborhood Wants a Healthier Environment

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Healthy Living Matters (HLM), a childhood obesity prevention collaborative, has committed to curbing obesity in the Houston/Harris County area by using policy action to make healthier changes in communities. Made up of a handful of local leaders and professionals, HLM engages youth as change-agents in their communities.

After empowering the youth to assess current food access and built environment within their Houston/Harris County neighborhoods, they hope to educate at-risk communities on what can be done to make healthy living easier. HLM continuously monitors federal, state and local policy trends that impact childhood obesity. By year two, they hope to put out a Community Action Plan, which will serve as a roadmap for policy implementation. While HLM hopes to affect environmental changes through policy eventually, they know that to be successful in the long run, the need to start by hitting the streets.

Over 60% of people living in Pasadena, a small suburb south of Houston, Texas, are Latino. HLM researched two area elementary schools, Kruse Elementary and Gardens Elementary, and found that 44% of children attending Kruse and 58% of children attending Gardens are at a high risk for obesity.

Over the next year, HLM will be working closely with Pasadena to understand how neighborhood design and access to healthy food may be related to childhood obesity. To start, they’ve called on area youth to do community assessments of barriers to physical activity and of neighborhood food options. These HLM ambassadors are using Photovoice to capture pictures of aspects of their community that need to be changed.