Growing Up Healthy…
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At the end of last year, the Harvard Pilgrim Foundation sponsored a half-day gathering of public health folks, nutritionists, researchers and others to discuss diet, exercise and kids. The Foundation Board voted earlier in 2007 to focus the Foundation’s efforts over the next several years on these three topics - which we’ve branded, “Growing Up Healthy.” As part of the campaign, the Foundation has been making some significant (for us, anyway) gifts to schools, after-school programs and other kids’ initiatives in MA, NH and ME that are focused on helping kids eat right and get more exercise. If you’re interested, check out the Foundation’s web site for more details.
Anyway, the keynote speaker at this event was a Tufts University Professor by the name of Christine Economos, who did a lot of the research and field work associated with “Shape Up Somerville” - the city of Somerville’s efforts to do something through its school system to improve the health and weight of Somerville school students. The short story on this was pretty interesting - by encouraging walking to school (where appropriate, of course), totally re-arranging the snacks available in school and completely overhauling everything about the school cafeteria menus, the city of Somerville was able to prove - using rigorous academic research methods, that they made progress on their students’ weight gain in one year.
Now before everybody heads for the Golden Globe Award stand (joke intended), this project was an immense amount of work for a relatively small gain - but it did stop the weight trend, and it did instill a different way of thinking about diet and exercise in the schools in Somerville. I’ll write more on this subject in the next few days, but I did want to give those who are interested a chance to check out the Tufts web site on Shape Up Somerville. It’s pretty interesting stuff - and a whole ‘nother side to the “what can we do about health care” question.
I had a question related to kids healthcare - this is all interesting in primary/secondary prevention depending on if the kids have the condition already. I was wondering though, what does harvard pilgrim do for kids who have chronic conditions. So based on this site, for obesity you fight obesity you pay for nutritionists etc., but what about if the children develop a debilitating condition sometime in childhood - lets say like a head injury requiring yrs of rehab therapy or lets say an unfortunate ankle injury requiring yrs of rehab therapy to return to normal baseline function? Most of harvard pilgrim’s policies limit the post hospital treatments using archaic evidence and standards - as a good example, physical therapy is still limited per condition - so if obesity was treated under the physical therapy benefit, a child would be limited to a total number of visits within 60 days. after that they should have learned everything they need to to continue. No one would agree to that. So why is it that hphc cuts the rehab therapies off on a per diagnosis basis? Shouldn’t you consider other conditions like obesity as a longterm battle? Other insurance companies like blue cross limit rehab therapies on a yearly basis but not the random limit of per diagnosis. I was wondering if you could elaborate on why obesity is a battle worth paying for over numerous visits but rehabillitation for other diagnosis are not?
Thanks
j MD
Charlie,
You are absolutely right that Shape Up Somerville is an outstanding program. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has been a sponsor of Professor Economus’ work for several years. We were delighted that one of the first places that she made her research results public was at our Jump Up & Go! conference in October.
The solution to the problem of childhood obesity is clearly not one for the health care world alone. It will have to involve the whole community, including families, community leaders, schools, health care professionals, employers, government agencies, and health plans. We strongly agree that health plans and employers should make investments in programs like Shape Up Somerville, as well as in media campaigns, school programs, tools for clinicians, collaborations with public health efforts, and research on models that work. In fact, BCBSMA has invested almost $12 million in such efforts over the past decade through our Jump Up and Go! program. So it’s wonderful that HPHC’s Foundation is making a strong commitment in this area. It’s great to have company in the fight.
You can see more about these efforts at the Jump Up and Go web site: http://www.jumpupandgo.com