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Non-CWH Reviews, Papers and Policy Statements

Non-CWH Tools & Materials

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Asian language pamphlets on nutrition for parents and families now available!

The risk of obesity among Asian-American children increases the longer they are in the United States. Agencies and heath organizations serving this population have expressed the need for educational materials focused on helping children achieve healthy weights.

Materials, currently available as downloads from our website, are written in Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hmong and English. We anticipate developing materials in Khmer and Lao.

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California Obesity Prevention Initiative Website and Toolkit

Download the Do More-Watch Less Toolkit, a cutting edge effort to help pre-teens incorporate more screen-free activities into their lives. Designed for and field tested with "tweens" (ages 10-14,) and after school program staff, the toolkit includes step-by-step instructions and handouts that guide "tweens" through hands-on activities including:

• tracking the time they typically spend in front of a screen,
• embarking on a challenge to go screen-free for up to a week, and
• setting a goal to engage in no more than 2 hours of screen-based activities per day
• celebrating their efforts to reduce their screen-time with a party

Developed by the California Obesity Prevention Initiative, a program of the California Department of Health Services, the California Obesity Prevention Initiative website isdesigned to assist community activists, leaders, and public health professionals in the fight against obesity. The site provides the latest guidelines, data, and resources for combating this epidemic, including existing policies and how you might work to incorporate healthy activity and eating policies in your community. New information and resources added often.

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Children & Weight Project Materials

ANR Communication Services
6701 San Pablo Ave.
Oakland, CA 94608
phone: (510)642-2431 or (800)994-8849, fax (510) 643-5470
email: anrcatalog@ucdavis.edu, Download Center ANR products brochure

Order materials

Children and Weight: What Health Professionals Can Do Training Kit

This kit contains everything you need to conduct in-service training for health professionals on diagnosing, assessing, and treating pediatric obesity. Pilot-tested with over 500 health professionals, it has received overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Children and Weight: What Communities Can Do

This resource kit is a how-to guide offering technical assistance to community leaders who want to launch a local task force dedicated to reducing childhood overweight.

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Fit Families Novela Series: For Parents Who Want the Best for Their FamiliesPublication 3496, $65.00
Fit Families Novela series (30 extra fotonovelas/10 of each): 3496A, $30.00

ANR Communication Services
6701 San Pablo Ave.
Oakland, CA 94608
phone: (510)642-2431 or (800)994-8849, fax (510) 643-5470
email: anrcatalog@ucdavis.edu, Download Center ANR products brochure

Order materials

This innovative bilingual resource kit is created for health professionals working with parents who have young children. The video and print fotonovelas are designed to stimulate discussion on how to create healthy snacks, increase physical activity, and limit TV watching. Realistic characters, who are struggling to make improvements in their families' health habits, help parents understand how small changes can make a big difference. Kit includes:

• A series of three 12-minute videonovelas: Marisa's Big Move - a story about limiting time watching TV and videos, Marta's Delicious Snacks - one mother's story about the rewards of creating healthy snacks, and Christina's Day of Discovery - a family's story about increasing exercise
• 10 each of the three Fotonovelas that can be used in combination with the video novelas
• A Leader's Guide for educators with 3 simple lesson plans on how to incorporate the video and fotonovelas into existing curricula

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Happy, Healthy & Well: Worksite Wellness in Child Care Centers Promotes Healthy Habits in Staff, Children, and Families

Happy, Healthy & Well was developed for use with child care and early childhood education staff to bring information and support for adopting healthy nutrition and physical activity behaviors in the child care work environment. Research has shown that staff is more likely promote healthy habits for the children and families they work with, if they have adopted these behaviors themselves. Because many young children spend a significant part of each day in a preschool and/or child care setting, there is rich opportunity for their caretakers and teachers to model healthy nutrition and physical activity attitudes and behaviors throughout the day. This project was funded in part by USDA's Food Stamp NutritionProgram. Core components of the year-long Happy, Healthy & Well program for child care and early childhood education staff inlcude:

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Let's Get Moving!: Working Together to Promote Active Lifestyles in Young Children

ANR Communication Services
6701 San Pablo Ave.
Oakland, CA 94608
phone: (510)642-2431 or (800)994-8849, fax (510) 643-5470
email: anrcatalog@ucdavis.edu, Download Center ANR products brochure

Order full kit or

Download selected Let's Get Moving! materials:

• Activities Guide, English, Spanish
• Activitiy Cards, English, Spanish
• User's Guide, English

This exciting new resource kit for childcare providers, professionals, and parents is designed to introduce quick and easy ways to incorporate physical activity into the daily routines of children ages 2-7.  The kit highlights ways to promote activity in 5-10 minute intervals throughout the day. Video and activity cards emphasize the importance of being physically active in increasing confidence, self-esteem, problem solving and social skills, and in building lifelong healthy and active habits.  This resource kit includes:

The Center's Obesity Prevention Resource Kit, containing informaiton on obesity in California, was compiled for the Governor's Summit on Health, Nutrition and Obesity, held on September 15, 2005. A select group of leaders from multiple sectors including food industry, health plans, public education, real estate development, transportation, and parks and recreation joined other health and community groups as well as celebrities like Lance Armstrong and Dr. Phil, to present ways to reduce obesity rates in California. We encourage people to draw on the data and information compiled in the Obesity Prevention Resource Kit for their own research, advocacy, or programming efforts.

For information on national obesity trends, visit the CDC's Overweight and Obesity: Childhood Overweight pages.

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Obesity: Dietary and Developmental Influences

The Center for Weight and Health is pleased to announce the publication of Obesity: Dietary and Developmental Influences . Available through CRC Press, this book provides researchers, health practitioners and policy makers alike with the latest evidence about this modern-day epidemic. Included in the book are:

- A synopsis of the diet most likely to protect against the development of obesity
- The roles of growth and developmental periods in obesity development
- The influence of parenting practices on children's weight
- Information on the relationship between each aspect of dietary intake and obesity

The role of 26 different foods, beverages and eating behaviors as well as eight developmental periods in the human life cycle are described. The dietary factors examined include the macronutrients (the different types of carbohydrate, protein and fat), vitamins and minerals, specific types of foods and beverages, snack and meal patterns, portion size, parenting practices, breastfeeding and more. Each developmental period is examined in the context of the likelihood of obesity development. For each dietary factor and developmental period, four lines of evidence are examined: changes over time in dietary consumption and behaviors, plausible mechanisms, observational studies and prevention trials.

The book also contains 38 tables that summarize observational studies, 38 graphs depicting trends in dietary intake, and nine tables that summarize prevention trials. A synopsis of the latest research on obesity investigates all major lines of evidence and clarifies common misconceptions while identifying behaviors to target and the dietary factors that show the most promise for prevention.

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California Project LEAN and the Center for Weight and Health are pleased to announce a new resource to develop, implement, and evaluate your school wellness policy. This user-friendly guide is designed to serve as a roadmap for implementing school nutrition and physical activity policies, including local wellness policies. The Guide includes:

Easy-to-use worksheets

This guide can be purchased or downloaded from the California Project Lean website.

CWH Reviews, Papers & Policy Statements

Copyright & Disclaimer

Cafeteria Facilities, Often Overlooked, Yet Key to Student Nutrition and Health - The physical environment in which school foods are prepared and served is critical to the success of any program designed to improve student food consumption. Findings from three important state-wide studies conducted by the Center for Weight and Health in California, The Linking Education, Activity and Food (LEAF) Program, The California Fresh Start Program (CFSP) evaluation, and The Evaluation of SB 12 and 965 (California’s legislatively-mandated school nutrition standards), suggest that school facilities are a critical element of any effort to improve student nutrition and health, yet these facilities are often inadequate to support student wellness.

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Disparities in Obesity: Prevalence, Causes and Solutions, Authors Patricia B. Crawford, May-Choo Wang, Sarah Krathwhol, Lorrene D. Ritchie. Changes in rising obesity rates are significantly greater for ethnic/minority populations than for white populations, making it critical to understand the roots of these recent trends. The solution must be a coordinated multi-level environmental approach.

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Dollars and Sense: The Financial Impact of Selling Healthier School Foods - This brief report examines the financial impact of implementing nutrition standards for foods and beverages sold on school campus outside of the school meal program.  It also discusses the challenges encountered and factors contributing to financial success.  Concrete recommendations are provided.

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Focusing on TV: Obesity Prevention for "Tween-Age" Girls - The period from 10 to 14 years of age (“tweens”) is a critical period for the development of obesity that is likely to last into adulthood. Recent research has shown that a high rate of television (TV) viewing is a critical contributor to weight gain in children of all ages. This brief identifies factors that influence their TV viewing, to better understand the role of TV in their lives, and to develop effective approaches to reduce TV viewing among tween girls.

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A Framework for understanding Food Insecurity: An Antihunger Approach I A Food Systems Approach Authors: Sujatha Ganapathy Sheila Bliss Duffy, Christy Getz. Contributors: Diane Metz, Mary Fujii, Helen Ullrich, MS, RD, Kenneth Hecht, Gail Woodward Lopez, Pat Crawford.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Sports Drinks - Isn’t Gatorade or Powerade the best drink for after practice? Aren’t sports drinks and juice a lot healthier than soda? If professional athletes are promoting and drinking sports drinks, shouldn’t my kids? Parents, coaches, and physical education instructors often ask about the value of sports drinks. Researchers at the Center for Weight & Health, U.C. Berkeley, answer these and several other frequently asked questions about sports drinks. Available in Spanish.

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Improving Children's Academic Performance, Health and Quality of Life: A Top Policy Commitment in Response to the Children's Obesity and Health Crisis in California with the California Elected Women's Association for Education and Research (CEWAER). A concise review of the importance of healthy eating and physical activity for California children's academic performance, physical health and social well-being. Authors: Gail Woodward Lopez, Joanne Ikeda, Pat Crawford.

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Marketing Foods and Beverages: Why Licensed Commercial Characters Should Not Be Used to Sell Healthy Products to Children - Letter to the editor written by Wendi Gosliner and Kristine A. Madsen, MD, MPH, published in PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 6 June 2007, pp. 1255-1256 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-0724).

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Methods of Calculating Deaths Attributable to Obesity Authors: Katherine M. Flegal, Barry I. Graubard, David F. Williamson.

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Obesity in Latino Communities: Prevention, Principles and Action by the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California Authors: Gail Woodward Lopezand George R. Flores. Contributors: Alvaro Garza, Fernando Mendoza, Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, Eddy Jara, Anne Sunderland, Rita Nguyen, Joanne Ikeda, Karen Scheuner. Latinos in California are disproportionately affected by obesity and its complications. Addressing the issue among Latinos requires an understanding of not only the biological causes, but also of the culture, values, resources and environments that influence eating and physical activity. This timely document provides guidance and concrete examples of promising approaches for addressing obesity in Latino communities.

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Pediatric Overweight: A Review of the Literature Authors: Lorrene Ritchie, Susan Ivey, Maggie Masch, Gail Woodward Lopez, Joanne Ikeda,Pat Crawford.

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Position of the American Dietetic Association: Individual-, Family-, School-, and Community-Based Interventions for Pediatric Overweight
A thorough evidence based review of the interventions to prevent and treat childhood overweight, conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Texas and Louisiana State for the American Dietetic Assocaiton, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association Jun;106(6):925-45.

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Preventing obesity: What should we eat? Authors: Lorrene D. Ritchie, Gail Woodward-Lopez, Dana Gerstein, Dorothy Smith, Pat B. Crawford. To curb the escalating rates of obesity in California and across the nation, it is imperative to identify dietary behaviors that prevent excessive weight gain. Reports in the press are often conflicting and more often confuse than clarify the issue of what people should eat to prevent obesity. The Center recently conducted a comprehensive review of the literature published between 1992 and 2003 on the dietary determinants of obesity in children and adults, and examined secular trend data, mechanistic research, observational studies and prevention trials. We found that the dietary factors related to increased obesity were high intakes of dietary fat, sweetened beverages and restaurant-prepared foods, and the increased likelihood of skipping breakfast. Factors most likely to protect against obesity were the higher consumption of dietary fiber, fruits and vegetables, calcium and dairy products.

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Position Paper: Prevention of Childhood Overweight -- What Should Be Done? An overview of determinants of child overweight, effective strategies to prevent child overweight and recommendations for action. Authors: Lorrene Ritchie, Pat Crawford, Gail Woodward Lopez, Susan Ivey, Maggie Masch, Joanne Ikeda.

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Prevention of type 2 diabetes in youth: Etiology, promising interventions and recommendations. Authors: Lorrene D. Ritchie, Sujatha Ganapathy, Gail Woodward Lopez, Dana E. Gerstein, Sharon E. Fleming. Published in Pediatric Diabetes 2003:4:174-209, copyright Blackwell Munksgaard, 2003.

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Weighing the risks and benefits of BMI reporting in the school setting Authors: Pat Crawford, Gail Woodward Lopez, Joanne Ikeda.

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