Category Archives: policy/advocacy

Making Connections: Ten Years of Unique Partnerships

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Adam Becker

by Adam Becker, PhD, MPH, Executive Director

Welcome to the third quarter of our 10th anniversary year!  This quarter, we are focusing on one of the things that makes our consortium truly unique – the innovative partnerships that help us to span professional and geographical boundaries and take a holistic approach to confronting the childhood obesity epidemic in Chicago and beyond. 

In addition to the community-based organizations we highlighted last quarter, CLOCC also includes other segments of our community that are very engaged in our work and bring their own unique perspective.  These include our clinical, school, corporate, and advocacy partners.  From CLOCC’s beginning back in 2002, we recognized the importance of these segments and the importance of engaging them as we built our consortium.  In fact, the Clinical Practices, Government Policies and Programs, and School Systems Working Groups are among the original working groups from those early days!

The clinical perspective has always been a significant part of CLOCC’s focus and make-up.  Our founder, Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, was a pediatrician on staff at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (formerly Children’s Memorial Hospital).  Her vision for the consortium grew out of her daily experience in her clinical practice – seeing increasing numbers of obese patients in the Nutrition Clinic she also founded.  Being based at Lurie Children’s meant that we were immersed and well-versed in the clinical significance of this epidemic. 

Also from the beginning, we recognized that we could not address childhood obesity without significant engagement with local neighborhood schools and Chicago Public Schools as a district.  Children spend a significant percentage of their day in schools, eat at least one and sometimes as many as three meals a day on school grounds, and thus schools are ideal places to educate children about healthy eating and physical activity and create daily opportunities for them to practice healthy behaviors.  Our partnership with Chicago Public Schools extends all the way back to 2003, when we worked with school nurses to gather student body mass index (BMI) data using the Illinois Child Health Examination Forms submitted by every child at school entry.  This project led to a significant event in CLOCC’s history – the release of the first-ever prevalence data for Chicago children ages 3 – 7 in December of 2003.  This release, which was front-page news in the city, alerted Chicagoans that the obesity rate among these young children in Chicago was 2 ½ times the national average, and it put CLOCC “on the map.”  This marked the beginning of a very productive relationship with CPS, and they remain engaged in CLOCC in very important ways.  In fact, one of the major pillars of our Healthy Places project involves a partnership with CPS and Healthy Schools Campaign to promote school wellness and help CPS schools achieve “gold status” in the HealthierUS School Challenge.  Over the years, we have also worked with charter schools, Head Start centers, and other settings where children learn and play, and these environments continue to be a significant focus in our work. 

The corporate sector is a group whose active engagement in CLOCC generates a lot of interest.  CLOCC established the Corporate Advisory Committee (CAC) in 2004.  The CAC provides an opportunity for CLOCC and for-profit leaders to understand and learn from each other regarding the challenges and opportunities for obesity prevention from a unique perspective.  The CAC also gives corporations a place at the table to explore and implement obesity prevention strategies using their unique skills and resources.  We understood early on that the corporate sector has a role to play, and we have relied on their vision, expertise, and enthusiasm to tackle this problem over the years.  The CAC supported the work that went into creating our public education message, 5-4-3-2-1 Go!®, and they continue to support our efforts to spread the message throughout the city and state by helping to fund training, outreach, and educational materials.  These relationships are not without challenges as public health and for-profit priorities are not always exactly “in sync,” but we remain committed to active engagement and cross-learning and firmly believe that all organizations have a role to play if we are truly going to turn the tide on childhood obesity in Chicago and across the nation. I want to take this opportunity to especially thank our 10th Anniversary Sponsor, BlueCross and BlueShield of Illinois, whose generous support is making special 10 year anniversary activities possible.  You can read more about these activities here.

Our policy and advocacy work brings together the efforts of multiple sectors to make sure that children (and the adults that care for them) have opportunities to eat healthy and be physically active where they live, work, learn, and play.  Policy and advocacy work is one of the original cornerstones of CLOCC’s work.  In 2005, our efforts resulted in the adoption of Public Act 093-0966, which created the Illinois Childhood Obesity Study and Prevention Fund.  Also at that time, we convened over 80 stakeholder organizations to create the Illinois Childhood Obesity Prevention Consensus Agenda, resulting in five legislative bills whose passage we supported, with four of them being adopted as Public Acts.  These acts put tighter parameters on physical education waivers that schools could seek, added a nutrition and physical activity agenda to the mandate of the Illinois Early Learning Council, created an Illinois Food Policy Council, and created the state mechanism for disseminating federal safe routes to school funds.  In 2006, CLOCC established the City of Chicago Inter-Departmental Task Force on Childhood Obesity (IDTF), led by the Chicago Department of Public Health.  Originally comprised of four city agencies, the IDTF has grown to include 11 city agencies, all working together to address the childhood obesity epidemic as a city by deploying resources in a coordinated way. 

These details just scratch the surface of all the ways that our consortium has engaged diverse partners from multiple sectors in Chicago and beyond.  And strong diverse partners is exactly what our consortium will continue to depend on as we look toward the work of the fourth and final quarter of this remarkable celebration of our 10 years together!  Look for a new post from me in October when I will talk about CLOCC’s vision for the future.  With a decade under our belts as a consortium focused on the childhood obesity epidemic, what do we think the next ten years should look like?  Our fourth quarter activities will focus on what promises to be an exciting and challenging future.  Talk to you again soon!

DePaul Students Enhance Evaluation, Schools, and Advocacy Work at CLOCC

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DePaul University sign

by Elizabeth Katta, Meredith Jones, and Carolyn Jillson, Guest Bloggers

For the past two years, CLOCC has served as a 9-month practicum site for Master of Public Health students from DePaul University. After participating in an application and interview process, the students are matched with a position and site supervisor. This year, we hosted three talented students: Elizabeth Katta, Evaluation Intern; Meredith Jones, Schools Intern; and Carolyn Jillson, Advocacy Programs Intern. We are very grateful for their contribution to our work and their reflections below demonstrate the experience was also meaningful for each student.

Elizabeth Katta – As CLOCC’s Research and Evaluation intern, I was excited to see how a data driven organization conducts research and shares its results with Chicago partners. Working with Dr. Maryann Mason, Community and Evaluation Research Director, and Sarah Welch, Evaluation Manager, provided me the opportunity to take part in various activities within the Consortium, including data collection, community trainings, and organizational meetings. One of my favorite experiences was a SOPLAY (System for Observing Play and Leisure Activity in Youth) training at the Chicago Children’s Museum at Navy Pier. Sarah, Becca Calendo (CLOCC’s Health Educator) and I demonstrated a simple method to quantify activity in enclosed spaces. The fun, interactive activity demonstrated the Consortium’s dedication to providing useful services to their community partners. The bulk of my time at CLOCC was spent collecting data for my Capstone thesis, centered on an evaluation of CLOCC’s first breastfeeding study with the PCC Wellness clinic in the Austin community. I was able to see how community-based research is conducted as well have an opportunity to exercise my developing public health skills. My practicum time was invaluable because of these opportunities, and I hope to build upon the skills that CLOCC has helped me develop.

Meredith Jones – Serving as the School Systems Intern at CLOCC over the past year has afforded me the opportunity to understand the challenges and triumphs Chicago schools, teachers, principals, and PE teachers experience in sustaining a healthy classroom. Specifically through the Healthy Teacher Network, I enhanced practical skills such as event coordination and organized networking, evaluative skills when constructing instruments for program and workshop evaluation, and data collection and analysis as I compiled and streamlined large amounts of data on schools, individual teachers, and Chicago communities. Getting to know the structure and admirable objectives of the Healthy Teacher Network , which provides an environment conducive to teacher training and the exchange of valuable ideas for educators to use in their classrooms, will aid in my practice as a public health practitioner concerned with examining the structural determinants of health and coming to solutions for my community. The highlight of my time with CLOCC and the School Systems Working Group was the opportunity to interact directly with Chicago teachers who are passionate about implementing health-based strategies like physical activity breaks and nutrition education in their classrooms in order to improve the lives of their students. Their energy and devotion to the Healthy Teacher Network and CLOCC’s mission is truly contagious and emphatic.

Carolyn Jillson – I have really enjoyed working with CLOCC for my practicum at DePaul. I worked with Christine Bozlak, CLOCC’s Advocacy Program Manager, who provides technical assistance to the City of Chicago Inter-Departmental Task Force on Childhood Obesity (IDTF). I worked with CLOCC and IDTF to create a business plan for an IDTF Wellness Campus, a community-level intervention to coordinate and improve programing to improve health outcomes in neighborhoods with an especially high prevalence of childhood obesity. I found this project challenging, in that it required a big picture vision while I had to stay focused on the limitations of what is actually feasible. I learned a great deal about environmental approaches to complex health problems. Through this project I also became more familiar with a variety of governmental agency programs and partnerships and I was encouraged by the variety of effective and innovative programs and services currently being implemented in Chicago.

Thanks to our great DePaul practicum students for your enthusiasm, dedication, and hard work!  For more information on the Master of Public Health program at DePaul University, visit their website.

Dr. Becker Goes to Washington

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Adam Becker

by Adam Becker, PhD, MPH, Executive Director

With Congress back in session, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on my recent visit to Capitol Hill on September 16.  I was invited to serve on a panel by the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) to brief Congress about the important role that children’s hospitals play in childhood obesity prevention.  NACHRI staff set up the panel to represent the broad range of roles that hospitals play – from community-based prevention to intensive clinic-based behavior change interventions, to surgical and other specialty care for those children who are in urgent need of treatment.  It was an honor to be among distinguished colleagues from hospitals in New York, Maryland, and Washington State.  It was a privilege to hear from a very brave young high-school senior and her equally courageous mother as they described the challenges and the heartbreak that their family faced dealing with childhood obesity. 

Staff members from the offices of more than 30 U.S. Representatives and Senators came to learn about childhood obesity and what hospitals and hospital-based programs were doing.  I couldn’t help but think about how important it had been to childhood obesity prevention that First Lady Michelle Obama took such a public stand on the issue.  I believe that this visible show of concern helped to bring so many people into that room.  I told them about the many partners who make up CLOCC – more than 1,000 organizations in Chicago and beyond who are at the “front lines” of obesity prevention; working to make sure that kids and families know what the elements of a healthy lifestyle are, understand the risks of not making healthy choices, and have access to environments that make healthy choices easier where they learn, play, and live.  I told them how the health care system was an essential component of the battle against obesity but that doctors alone cannot solve the problem. 

As I listened to the other panelists talk about how complex and challenging it is for them to find the resources and models they need to do the very complicated and hard work of treating overweight and obese children, I thought about how much harder it would be if those of us fighting to improve nutrition and physical activity for children weren’t there trying to keep kids healthy enough that they didn’t need treatment. 

I was truly humbled to be in one of the very buildings where decisions get made every day that affect children and families.  Decisions about how much money our schools will get to provide food to children.  Decisions about whether our transportation system will accommodate those who want to walk or ride their bikes for at least some portion of their daily commute.  Decisions about how much of the fertile soil across the U.S. will be used to feed people vs. animals vs. vehicles.  Decisions about how many children will have health insurance and what the quality of that insurance will be.  And yes, decisions about reimbursement to health care institutions for the basic and specialized services that are so essential to protecting children when they are overweight or obese.

Congress headed home for vacations or to work on their re-election campaigns before they decided on some of the critical issues facing children and families.  I am frustrated that Congress went home with so much work yet to do, but I continue to be hopeful because so many people showed up that day to hear from us and because so many champions for children and families are working every day in Chicago, in Maryland, in New York, in Washington State working hard to make sure kids grow up healthy and happy.