CATCH—A Coordinated Approach to Child Health

From Research to Practice: Public Health Grand Rounds

National Satellite Broadcast and Webcast, June 15

Published: June 12, 2007

CDC and the University of North Carolina will broadcast the second in its series of Public Health Grand Rounds presenting real-world case studies that highlight the agency's Health Protection Goals on June 15. To register, click here.

The June 15th program, Coordinated Approach to Child Health: From Research to Practice, airing from 2 pm to 3 pm (Eastern time), focuses on the agency's Healthy People in Every Stage of Life Goal and features the CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) program implemented in the school system in Austin, Travis County, Texas.

CATCH is a coordinated school health program that is helping more than half a million school children at 1,200 elementary schools in Texas to improve their diets and increase their physical activity.

Healthy Catching Up to Do

Coordinated School Health Program Model

Since the 1980s, the number of overweight children (ages 6–19) has more than tripled in the United States. Today, 18 percent of elementary school children are overweight. Two major factors are contributing to this rise in overweight children:

• On average, children in the United States spend almost six hours a day with electronic media: TV, computer, and video games.

• Only 29 percent of children in the United States attend physical education classes daily; down from 42 percent in 1991.

In an effort to address these troubling statistics, CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) promotes the use of a Coordinated School Health Program Model (CSHP) to aid schools and communities in preventing and reducing chronic diseases in school children. CSHP includes eight interactive components that enable schools and communities to create their own coordinated school health programs.

Lone Star State Leads the Way

First- and second-graders in a Texas elementary school follow an exercise video.

In 2001, the Texas State Legislature passed a bill authorizing the Texas State Board of Education to require all school systems in Texas to provide 30 minutes per day of school-based physical activity and to implement a coordinated school health curriculum.

The CSHP model was used by leading child health experts at the University of Texas School of Public Health, the University of Minnesota, Tulane University, and the University of California at San Diego to develop the CATCH program in Texas.

The Texas CATCH program is made up of four of the CSHP components: health education, physical education, nutrition services, and family/community involvement. It began as a clinical trial to reduce cardiovascular disease and is now an effective public health intervention program statewide.

The program was funded by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.

To date, CATCH has been adopted by more than 5,000 schools of the 92,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Nineteen states (Florida, California, Illinois, Georgia, New York, New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, Oregon, Delaware, Missouri, Montana, and Maine) and the District of Columbia are working on CATCH initiatives.

Save the date for the next Public Health Grand Rounds on CDC's Health Protection Goals:

On September 28, in relation to CDC's Healthy World Goal, the Public Health Grand Rounds will feature a case study on the Care Program in Uganda.