National Public Health week is a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues important to improving our nation and our community.
“When we have children that are very unhealthy, as they get older they just become unhealthy adults, so its very important for us to keep the kids healthy,” said Julie Crane, a dietitian for Covenant’s Community Outreach.
She says its overwhelming to see how much childhood obesity has increased.
“The main thing I focus usually is on portion sizes,” said Crane, “I don’t ever say foods are good or bad, that tends to make people eat more bad ones than good ones.”
You can find Crane throughout the community at schools and Lubbock Children’s Health Clinic providing information to families on how to live a healthy life through Covenant’s Body, Mind Initiative.
“We actually go in doing programming teaching them about nutrition, but we also focus on healthy emotions.”
Crane says Covenant Health has a passion for helping people and it all starts with education.
“What I’ve seen is a lot of the parents just are not educated enough on what to do as far as healthy eating and exercise,” she said, “If they don’t have the education, they aren’t able to bring it to the children.”
She says fast food, because families are always on the go, and lack of exercise, contributed to today’s technology are the biggest factors she sees in childhood obesity.
She teaches simply getting up and walking around make all the difference.
“I try to get kids to actually help mom and dad to do some house work, it doesn’t go over to well, but I’m like, vacuuming, dusting, laundry, those give you a lot of exercise.”
Crane says children who are obese are at a higher risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes in the future. She has a class on diabetes education. Call 806-725-5218 for more information.
