A new initiative to combat childhood obesity in Louisiana will put 35 years of medical research into action by creating tools and programming for children, parents, teachers and primary care physicians.

Greaux Healthy was created in partnership between Pennington Biomedical Research and the Louisiana Department of Health.

Twenty schools across the state have already participated in pilot versions of the program, including eight in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district.

While Greaux Healthy programming won’t replace any existing curricula, it does have materials for parents, workbooks for kids and guides for both K-12 teachers and early childhood caregivers.

This programming is the result of taking decades of Pennington research and translating it into education children can understand and internalize, Melissa Martin, director of Greaux Healthy, said during a news conference Thursday at the Pennington campus.

Learning these strategies in a social, school setting has been shown to make actual changes in body fat percentage among growing kids, she said.

Louisiana ranks third highest for childhood obesity in the United States, and data from the National Survey for Children’s Health shows that 1 in 5 children in the state are obese.

A survey of Louisiana parents ranked childhood obesity as a bigger concern than smoking/vaping, mental health issues and other illnesses.

Obesity is a disease

Pennington researchers made clear Thursday that obesity is a real threat to children’s health.

“Obesity affects just about every organ system in the body. It induces chronic inflammation,” said Amanda Staiano, the director of Pennington’s Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior laboratory. “It’s making those organs work harder. That’s where you start seeing breathing problems, sleep apnea.”

Diabetes and heart disease — additional illnesses that Staiano says concern doctors — are also being seen in younger and younger children as well. When teens or preteens are diagnosed with these conditions, they have often been obese for years, she said.

Early signs of obesity can be seen as early as preschool, Staiano said.

Obesity is also considered a chronic disease on its own, rather than simply a condition that causes other illnesses, said Peter Katzmarzyk, chief scientific officer for Greaux Healthy.

Because of this, obesity should be treated with the same seriousness as other diseases, he said.

Despite society’s fascination with fad diets, superfoods and fitness trends, Katzmarzyk said the science behind obesity is simple.

“What it comes down to with obesity is energy balance,” he said. “So you know, high-protein diet, low-carb diet, as long as they induce an energy imbalance, as long as you cut your calories, it will help a great deal.”

The goal of Greaux Healthy is to get children thinking actively about what they are eating and working those habits into their natural diet. 

Staiano described a “traffic light” approach, where kids are taught that green foods are green for go, and should be chosen first when looking for a snack. Then there are red foods, which children are taught to keep track of and eventually learn to cut back on.

To Staiano and Katzmarzyk, programs like Greaux Healthy are how Pennington fulfills its slogan of promoting public health “from the cell to society.”

Personal responsibility

In his remarks at the weekly Red Stick Farmer’s Market on Pennington’s campus, Bruce Greenstein, secretary for the Louisiana Department of Health, said childhood obesity is one public health crisis never goes away, with real progress being hard to achieve.

Greenstein says the state has spent a lot of money on Medicaid and public health programs, and that leaders with the government and schools say they are committed to fight against obesity. “How come we haven’t made more progress in the last 15 years?” he asked.

Some public health victories have been achieved that also were previously thought impossible: Smoking rates are down, seat belt use is up, opioid overdoses are dropping for the first time in years.

The key to these campaigns, in Greenstein’s eyes, was practical messaging about public health dangers being clearly communicated to the public.

“In all of those campaigns, they’re not touchy-feely, they’re not nice,” he said, giving examples like the “This is your brain on drugs” ad campaign, “Click it or Ticket,” and the commercial series depicting car crashes issued by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

He said the success in those campaigns also came from personal buy-in from the public, not just doctors and politicians, to make their own lives better.

“We need people on the front lines working harder to convince kids to do more,” Greenstein said. “We need more supporters outside of the health care world and in the communities, in the schools. Food and activity has to be put at the top.”

In a prepared statement, Gov. Jeff Landry said that Greaux Healthy was created with the goal to “make Louisiana’s children healthy again.”

When asked if this language ties Greaux Healthy to other “Make America Healthy Again” initiatives, Greenstein said he couldn’t square it with every piece of current legislation related to public health or slogans “that are coming from Washington, D.C.”

However, he did say, “We do want to make Louisiana healthy. We do want to take bad additives out of the food supply. In fact, you’ve heard the governor talk many times about programs, like SNAP, that shouldn’t have foods that work against health, where the government is subsidizing, or in this case, paying for all of it.”