Texas Child Obesity Research Demonstration (CORD).
Project Overview
CORD is a CDC funded project designed to evaluate community-based obesity prevention and treatment programs in Austin and Houston. CORD connects the dots between families, pediatricians, schools and local youth organizations to support children’s healthy eating and active living. If successful, CORD will become a national model for medical and community practice.
Check Resource tab for Next Steps materials: themed follow-up visits for practitioners to help patients achieve a healthy weight.
Despite intensive national efforts to address childhood obesity, the epidemic persists. Recognizing the challenges, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have called for a systems-oriented approach to address childhood obesity.
Primary Prevention – Programs designed to prevent obesity
The community-wide intervention implements obesity prevention programs at schools and at local doctors’ clinics.
- Selected Head Start and AISD & HISD elementary schools will implement CATCH (Coordinated Approach To School Health), a program that promotes children’s physical activity and healthy food choices.
- In selected clinics pediatricians are trained in the Next Steps program, in which physicians counsel patients and families on healthy behaviors.
Secondary Prevention – Programs designed to prevent disease in high-risk children
Overweight and obese children are screened by a pediatrician and their families are invited to participate in a 12-month family-based weight management program. Community health workers connect local doctors’ offices to MEND program managers.
- Weekly MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, and Do it!) classes delivered at local YMCAs. MEND is a 3-month program designed for the entire family that helps overweight children improve their health, fitness and self-esteem.
- Cellular phone-based social marketing campaign designed to support and reinforce program components among parents and schools, provided in partnership with IT’S TIME TEXAS/ACTIVE Life.
- The Healthy Kitchen/La Concina Alegre cooking classes developed by the Sustainable Food Center.
- The Be Well book club.
- Participation in sports teams at local YMCAs.
Collaborators working on this CDC demonstration project include: The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health, Baylor College of Medicine’s Children’s Nutrition Research Center, MEND, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Texas Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity at Dell Children’s Medical Center, Texas Department of State Health Services, the YMCA, IT’S TIME TEXAS/ACTIVE Life, the Sustainable Foods Center and CATCH.
Collaborators
- Austin Independent School District
- Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine
- Child, Inc.
- Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School
- Harris County Department of Education
- Houston Independent School District
- IT’S TIME TEXAS/ACTIVE Life
- MEND
- Seton Family of Hospitals
- Texas Children’s Hospital
- Texas Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity
- University of Nebraska Medical Center
Project Staff
Project personnel are listed below. Click on a name to view the individual profile.
