| ||
| Vol. 25, No. 4 |
| March 1, 2003 |
|
Children’s Health Program Earns Kudos from Federal Government By SCOTT MERVILLE The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston The success of a school-based health promotion effort based in The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston was spotlighted during a January town hall meeting in Austin with Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. Peter Cribb, program director of the Coordinated Approach to Child Health, known as CATCH, highlighted the program’s efforts from Brownsville to El Paso to Bryan and beyond Texas during a session that included health leaders from across the nation. CATCH is a coordinated school health program that includes a classroom curriculum, a physical education curriculum, a child nutrition service program and family involvement to encourage children to exercise, eat right, and avoid tobacco use. The program has been adopted by more than1,070 Texas elementary schools and has expanded to New Mexico, Georgia, Maine, Illinois, and Florida. “CATCH works because it gets people working together,” Cribb said. “It’s user friendly, it’s fun, and it links to the instructional program.” Thompson pledged his support for the program after meeting with . Cribb, physical education specialist Amy Lippincott of Powell Elementary School in San Antonio and three of her students. Lippincott is the CATCH coordinator at Powell in San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District. Thompson’s town hall session emphasized health promotion and disease prevention. Also on the program were Texas Commissioner of Health Eduardo Sanchez; Kenneth Cooper, M.D., founder of the Dallas Cooper Clinic; Dean Ornish, M.D., founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute; and Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., Food and Drug Administration commissioner. CATCH began as a research project funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The UT-Houston team has focused in recent years on getting the program implemented in public schools. The program incorporates expertise provided by Guy Parcel, Ph.D., executive dean of the School of Public Health; Steve Kelder, Ph.D., director of the school’s Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research; Deanna Hoelscher, Ph.D., associate director of the school’s Human Nutrition Center; and Nancy Murray, Dr.P.H., assistant professor of behavioral sciences.
©2006 Texas Medical Center E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/03_01_03/page_12.html |