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Community Approach to Child Health Summary Findings

CATCH stands for Community Approach to Child Health and is a grant project awarded to pediatricians from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Lester, our Executive Director, was awarded a CATCH Planning Grant in January 2011, to develop an Integrated Community Obesity Intervention Model.

Dr. Lester:
“I kept getting calls from school nurses, parents, grandparents, and healthcare providers, asking me where they could take their obese and overweight children for help. There was one child who kept coming to mind who is an obese first grader who was not able to walk down four steps without turning blue. When I started Teach a Kid to Fish, I knew there was a gap in intervention programs and services for overweight and obese children, but didn’t know the full extent. We are always focusing on prevention and early childhood, but at the same time have to do something to help the children of our community who are currently suffering from the epidemic of obesity. The goal of the planning grant project was to bring schools, healthcare providers, parents, organizations and the community together to develop a community model which will specifically help children who are currently overweight and obese.”

From January to June, 2011, Teach a Kid to Fish worked with many of you who attended meetings, and completed surveys. The CATCH Planning Grant focused on gathering information through these key areas:

• Focus Groups
• Partnerships
• Survey Data
• Community Meetings
• Community Asset Mapping
• Dissemination of Resources

Teach a Kid to Fish will work with our community partners to fund and sustain the implementation goals of the CATCH grant which include:

• Screening of BMI in all students
• Blood Pressure Screening for at-risk students
• Screening for diabetes in at-risk students
• Develop a Health Report Card and a series of communications from schools to parents
• Parent meetings on health topics
• Train parents as health liaisons
• 54321Go! curriculum in the schools
• Community Resource Directory of children’s nutrition and physical activity programs
• Healthy Families Intervention Curriculum and Program for Obese children
• Foster Healthy Weight in Youth Trainings for physicians

Teach a Kid to Fish realizes that this will take more than one program and one organization to implement this community model. It will take the entire community to find a solution to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Our organization is committed to our vision of creating those solutions to improve the health of our children.

A Note From Board President, Todd Fitzgerald

Father, Community Stakeholder and avid runner, Todd brings an enthusiasm and energy that ties in with Teach a Kid to Fish’s vision and mission to “Prevent and reduce childhood obesity by empowering Lincoln children and families to eat healthy and be active.”

He currently serves on the Lincoln Parks and Recreation Advisory Board of Directors and is a Community Stakeholder in the Martin Luther King Youth March and Rally, Belmont Tracks Leadership Program and the Dawes Empowerment Program. He has served as Community Columnist for the Lincoln Journal Star, Project All Academy for Leadership and State Farm’s United Way Planning Committee.

A 1996 Graduate of Hastings College with a BA in English, Todd was a member of the Men’s Basketball Team, Public Relations Council and President of Tau Beta Alpha Fraternity. He works for State Farm Fire & Casualty Company where he is a member of the Multi-Cultural Employee Resource Group.

Todd enjoys spending time with his family, running, and traveling.

A Take From Todd…….. This is an incredible opportunity and I am humbled and truly honored to become the President of the Board of Directors for Teach a Kid To Fish. The work that Dr. Lester, Rick Helweg and the board have done in the last 3 years is inspiring and remarkable.

The obesity epidemic has been identified as “the greatest single threat to public health”, and a study by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation determined this generation of children are going to live a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That is not acceptable; we must lock arms as a community and fight to save our children. Teach a Kid to Fish and its partners have a vision of reducing the obesity rate in our community from 19% to 15% by 2015.

We all have to do our part and it’s going to take community collaboration. You don’t have to be the biggest donor or the top volunteer, you can give what you can when you can and you will still make a difference.

My friends, the movement is here and the time is now! My life is greatly blessed from giving my time to fight this curable epidemic and empower the children and families of our community, I have learned true leadership comes from the heart and by sharing that with others will create a strong network of giving and support for Teach a Kid to Fish. I look forward to you joining the fight and your continued support.

Sincerely,
Todd Fitzgerald

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/politics/09michelle.html
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