Should Employers Be Doing More to Promote Family Health and Help Fight Childhood Obesity?

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. - April 4, 2013 - PRLog -- New Rochelle, NY—The battle to control the childhood obesity epidemic is being fought on many levels. It could benefit from targeted programs and funding to support and integrate worksite and school-based health promotion initiatives. An insightful Roundtable Discussion entitled “Working on the Health of Families: Where Children Fit in Worksite Health Promotion Efforts” offers novel strategies and solutions and is published in Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The Roundtable is available free on the Childhood Obesity website at http://www.liebertpub.com/chi.

“Teaching healthy practices in school is of vital importance but we all acknowledge that resource limitations often restrict what can be done there, and the engagement of businesses in support of that effort could help,” says David L. Katz, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief of Childhood Obesity, Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, and Moderator of the Roundtable Discussion. “There is an enormous opportunity to promote health with family as the basic functional unit and reach kids and teachers and adults in other worksites.”

Roundtable participants included Deborah Lewison Grant, Co-Founder, FoodFight (New York, NY); Todd J. McGuire, Chief Technology Officer, incentaHEALTH, LLC (Denver, CO); Scott McQuigg, Chief Executive Officer, HealthTeacher, Inc. (Nashville, TN); Karen Voci, Executive Director, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation (Wellesley, MA); and Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, Professor, Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA).

“Schools often lack resources to implement new health-promotion programming and the business community could provide them,” says Dr. Katz. “Businesses stand to get a return on investment in wellness and that could be greater when wellness engages the whole household. What happens at the worksite may, alas, stay at the worksite unless parallel programming for adults and children helps to shift the culture of a family toward health as a shared priority.”

About the Journal
Childhood Obesity is a bimonthly journal, published in print and online, and the journal of record for all aspects of communication on the broad spectrum of issues and strategies related to weight management and obesity prevention in children and adolescents. The Journal includes peer-reviewed articles documenting cutting-edge research and clinical studies, opinion pieces and roundtable discussions, profiles of successful programs and interventions, and updates on task force recommendations, global initiatives, and policy platforms. It reports on news and developments in science and medicine, features programs and initiatives developed in the public and private sector, and includes a Literature Watch. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Childhood Obesity website at http://www.liebertpub.com/chi.

About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative medical and biomedical peer-reviewed journals, including Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, Population Health Management, Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, and Journal of Women’s Health. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s more than 70 journals, newsmagazines, and books is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website at http://www.liebertpub.com.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.      140 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215    www.liebertpub.com
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