Las Vegas Sun

February 12, 2012

Currently: 62° | Complete forecast | Log in

Keeping students fit, trim, healthy

Bill would require public schools to measure the heights, weights of a sample of students

Image

Steve Marcus

Ryan Spence, center, shows off his Hula Hoop skills during a Smart Heart program at the Children’s Heart Center of Las Vegas.

By

Thursday, March 26, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Smart Heart

Jocelin Anguiano, right, 10, and other students try to outlast each other as they Launch slideshow »

In Today's Sun

Sun Archives

Beyond the Sun

When her 8-year-old son stepped on the scale at his doctor’s office, Nikki Sobotka was expecting to hear that he had gained some weight.

She wasn’t prepared to hear Nathan’s weight had jumped 30 pounds in seven months.

“We were eating out a lot more, he was watching too much TV — I knew that,” Sobotka said. “But still, it really shocked me.”

After determining Nathan had a heart murmur and high cholesterol, the pediatrician referred him to a cardiologist.

Medical professionals, education officials and lawmakers believe that like the rest of the nation, Nevada is dealing with a sharp increase in childhood obesity. Patients such as Nathan provide anecdotal evidence, but reliable statistics on the size of the problem are scarce.

Assemblyman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, said without the data, Nevada organizations and agencies have difficulty qualifying for research grants. State and school leaders also lack information needed to develop policies to fight childhood obesity.

Denis has authored a bill that would make permanent a two-year-old pilot program that required public schools to measure the heights and weights of a representative number of students. The measurements — used to calculate students’ body mass indexes, or BMIs, considered an important indicator of overall health — would be provided to the Nevada State Health Division, where researchers would track the trends.

Supporters acknowledge that the bill is a small step forward. Assembly Bill 191 would merely make the pilot program permanent, rather than expanding the scope of the data-gathering.

But previous efforts to require that all students enrolled in Nevada’s public schools be weighed and measured drew strong opposition from school district representatives, who argued it would be an impossible task for overburdened campus nurses.

Still, supporters said the bill represents the beginning of an important public health fight.

The 2007 Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Survey found among the 7,000 students who took part, nearly half were trying to lose weight. About 30 percent of high schoolers and 25 percent of middle schoolers described themselves as overweight. Almost half of the adolescents surveyed said they spent more than three hours a day watching television, playing video games or using a home computer. Nearly a third said they hadn’t participated in physical activities on more than three days in the preceding week.

Dr. James McGhee, a Henderson pediatrician, said it is evident to him childhood obesity is growing in Nevada. About 20 percent of his patients are overweight, and another 10 percent are obese. Those numbers have doubled in the past seven years, he said.

“They don’t exercise enough, they aren’t fed well and they aren’t learning to choose correctly for themselves when they get older,” McGhee said. “We’re failing children on all these fronts, so how can we expect not to have a rapidly increasing obesity problem?”

Children who are severely overweight miss four times as much school as their healthier peers, and are four times as likely to struggle academically, according to national studies.

In recent years the Clark County School District instituted several health-related initiatives, including banning junk food sales to students in 2004. The contents of campus vending machines must meet a host of nutritional requirements. Carbonated beverages, even diet drinks, are forbidden.

Many Clark County schools have added extracurricular activities aimed at boosting fitness, citing the connection between student health and performance on standardized tests. But when it comes to setting daily schedules, recess and physical education classes continue to take a back seat to academic demands.

McGhee said in addition to gathering data on students’ height and weight, schools should be required to notify parents of the results. Patients move, change doctors or skip annual physicals, making it difficult for physicians to keep track of them.

“It’s left in the hands of the pediatricians to try and monitor our patients,” McGhee said. “But sometimes they don’t come back.”

Denis said he would have required parental notification in the bill — a requirement other states are using to fight childhood obesity — if the state weren’t facing a massive budget shortfall. But “this legislative session isn’t the time to come up with big plans that cost a lot of money,” he said.

Denise Tanata-Ashby, executive director of the Nevada Institute for Children’s Research and Policy at UNLV, said if there is a cost-efficient way of notifying parents of their child’s BMI, her organization would support it.

“Parents need to know,” she said. “Their child’s health, fitness and nutrition are going to impact their ability to learn.”

Schools conduct mandatory hearing, vision and scoliosis exams and must notify parents if an examination reveals a problem, said Diana Taylor, director of health services for the Clark County School District. If a student is significantly underweight or overweight, school nurses will sometimes reach out to families — even though it’s not required by statute, Taylor said.

But Denis said it’s not just the cost and burden that kept him from requiring parental notification. Some people believe it’s not schools’ role to tell parents their child is overweight, said Denis, who is also president of the Nevada PTA.

“I don’t think we’re quite ready” to notify parents, said Assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. “But we’re moving closer.”

Parnell, D-Carson City, said as public awareness increases, more people will realize in-school BMI exams are intended to help students, not stigmatize them.

As for 8-year-old Nathan, early intervention is yielding positive results.

Nathan’s cardiologist at the Children’s Heart Center of Las Vegas enrolled him in the clinic’s 12-week education and fitness program.

Following the program’s recommendations, Sobotka began replacing the high-sugar drinks in his lunchbox with a 10-calorie version, and scaling back the size of his meals. There are more bike rides and fewer video games. Nathan must wait 15 minutes after finishing a meal before requesting a second helping — how long it typically takes for a person to begin feeling full.

Sobotka said learning of Nathan’s problems has prompted improved eating and fitness habits for the rest of the household, as well.

“We decided we should do it as a family,” Sobotka said. “It’s not just him being asked to make the changes.”

Family involvement is the key to the young patient’s success in the program, said Lorie Coviello, an exercise physiologist supervising Nathan’s treatment.

“We still expect the children to play a role,” Coviello said. “But the parents buy the food and take the initiative.”

Discussion: comments so far…

Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.

Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.

No trusted comments have been posted.

Post a comment

Commenting requires registration.

Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy.

If you would like to submit your comment as a letter to the editor, you may submit it here.

Most Popular

  • Viewed
  • Discussed
  • E-mailed
  • Facebook