New Online Tool Aims to Combat Childhood Obesity Crisis

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One in five children struggles with obesity in America today.

Worse, this trend impacts over 25% of Latino kids, which is more than their white and black peers, according to Trust for America’s Health’s newest State of Obesity report.

In an effort to combat those numbers, the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) recently released its Measures Registry, Measure Registry User Guides, and Measures Registry Learning Modules platform.

“NCCOR’s goal in introducing these Learning Modules is to provide a useful resource for those in the field,” the group states in a recent press release. “The Modules highlight key concepts…making it easier to understand measurement issues in the four major domains of the Measures Registry: individual diet, food environment, individual physical activity, and physical activity environment.

“These trusted tools will save time and ultimately accelerate progress in childhood obesity research.”

NCCOR’s Newest Tool

As September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, the NCCOR released this online platform two weeks ago.

The goal of these modules is to provide a useful resource for students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners who do research in childhood obesity, according to the group.

In four 15-minute videos, these modules feature key concepts from the four domain-specific Measures Registry User Guides. This will make it easier and summarize for researchers how to understand measurement issues in the four major domains of:

• individual diet
• food environment
• individual physical activity
• physical activity environment

Additionally, this resource will make it less complicated for users to navigate the Measures Registry—a database of diet and physical activity measures relevant to childhood obesity research—and will save researchers time and ultimately accelerate research in childhood obesity.

The Four Major Domains (Explained)

As part of its online platform, NCCOR’s four major domains include what the group considers to be high-priority factors in childhood obesity.

1. Individual Diet: This domain talks about the dietary behaviors of children. It explains the connection between a child’s diet and childhood obesity.
2. Food Environment: This domain explains that the physical, social, and person-centered environments that individuals are in contribute to one’s food environment. One of the lead factors in childhood obesity is the lack of access to healthy foods, according to the report. Worse, a lack of healthy food in the Latino community can have significant, adverse impacts on individuals.
3.  Individual Physical Activity: This domain talks about factors that affect decisions about physical activity assessments. Physical Activity is extremely important for everyone especially children who are experiencing the most growth. “Nearly 40 percent of U.S. Latino youths ages 2-19 are overweight or obese compared with 28.5 percent of non-Latino white youths.” Click here If you would like to learn more about the importance of physical activity in the Latino community. 
4.  Physical Activity Environment: This domain is about the built environment and how it affects physical activity. It is imperative that Latino kids have access to active spaces. There are an insufficient amount of active sites such as parks, recreational centers, trails, etc. for Latino children.

“Latino communities are aiming to increase opportunities for physical activity by improving access to schools and other sites within the community that can be used for physical activity,” writes Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, an award-winning researcher, and director of Salud America!