Teresa Ambroz
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Teresa Ambroz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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It's called the Choices Initiative, and you can look online, Google it, Choices and Harvard, but they've identified the most effective interventions to address childhood obesity. And things like sugary beverage excise tax, you know, will really reduce health disparities. There's some, you know,
Some things like, you know, the policies that we have in schools about after school activity and play and making sure they're accessible to the populations experiencing the greatest health disparities so kids have a place to play and move and have access to healthy foods after school.
There are some things that are really parent education oriented with text messages that come through the primary care provider to support parents as they're trying to navigate the remarkable pressures on their children. to make unhealthy choices through, you know, they're exposed to so much advertising.
Like if we had a policy at a federal level about advertising to children, that would have a huge impact. And think about all the rural communities with the dollar stores moving in, the grocery stores moving out. Those communities are experiencing a lot of health disparities as well. So those are all policy level things that need to be discussed.
So that's a great question in the media all the time, Stan. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out with guidelines for best practices in addressing childhood obesity. And they recommended that these lifestyle behavior programs that family healthy weight programs that Julie just was talking about earlier.
That's part of the focus of our grant is to make those proven programs available to communities experiencing the greatest disparities and figure out which ones make the most sense with those communities. And the medications, you know, we're going to have endocrinologists who specialize in this. There are some children who are having severe health problems.
Their weight is so great that, you know, they're having spinal problems or knees, knee problems. metabolic problems, that their lives are going to be, they're going to get things like kidney disease and blindness at much earlier ages and not have healthy lives. You know, for some of those kids, these medications are going to be really, really helpful, but they're not for cosmetic changes.
And lifestyle change in and of itself has many, many benefits. on affecting other health conditions like hypertension and dementia. So, you know, we can't kind of forget about that. There's not really a quick fix for health. It's not just about one pill.
So COVID, so we know People with diabetes and people with complications from diabetes had the most severe outcomes from COVID. It was really concerning, you know, really vulnerable populations. So really getting messages out for protection. But I think there's so much more work to be done here. One of the things, you know, I anticipated when that hit.
because I've worked in childhood obesity clinics before is, you know, over the summer months, kids tend to gain weight. They have less structure. School meals with the Healthy Hunger for Kids Act are really one of the healthiest sources of food kids get. And it's great that we have free school lunch for all now. I expect that's going to have a beneficial impact on our kids.
But we, I lost my train of thought and I totally lost it.
COVID. So kids did gain weight. Kids were dealing with stress. You know, we saw more people out walking, which is really encouraging, but we know healthy lifestyles can be beneficial for reducing risks from things like COVID. So we need to do better. We need to do more communication.
And on that note, we will be putting out community-based grants for community to lead the way in addressing food access related issues to prevent and support people with diabetes. Because we know having nutritious, not just food security, but food and nutrition security, you know, having access to good, wholesome foods that are appealing, that are safe, that, you know, are culturally appropriate.
We need to find better ways to make it easier to make a healthy choice.
Healthcare providers are really one of the places where it's most appropriate to talk about health. and how weight's affecting a child's health. Because it's not just a cosmetic issue. You know, it shouldn't be approached as a cosmetic issue. And providers don't feel comfortable talking about this often. We did some focus groups with providers and school nurses. This is a hard topic to talk about.
So I think more training to support the health messages, how to approach it, you know, not to contribute to disordered eating behaviors. for example, um, to not make the problem worse. So I think there's really important efforts that could go into helping equip health professionals in supporting. Yeah.
I love it. Food prescriptions are on the policy agenda for a lot of people to try to have healthcare coverage, to write a food prescription. Why wait until they get a chronic condition? Why not help somebody before that? It's, you know, the cost effectiveness of that and the studies that we're seeing are, you know, really, it's common sense to use those types of approaches.
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