New center aims to help children fight off pounds

Armed with nearly $1 million from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Dell Children's Medical Center is opening a new clinic, education and research center in the fight against childhood obesity.

A four-year foundation grant of $997,663, announced Tuesday, will establish the Texas Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity at the hospital. The center will provide education to the Central Texas community, research on the most effective ways to reduce childhood obesity, advocacy in the community and a medical clinic that will also provide psychological treatment — a novel dimension, said Dr. Aliya Hussaini, grant officer for the foundation's U.S. health portfolio.

"The key piece that's often missing is the mental health component," said Dr. Stephen Pont, medical director of the new center. "While recognizing any change is hard to do, this recognizes that obese and overweight kids are often challenged by depression, anxiety, poor self-worth and low self-esteem."

Pont said he was a chubby child and got "quite large in middle school, around the same time my mom died. We ate a lot of TV dinners.

"I feel like I can relate to the struggles of the kids. I have to make decisions every day about what I eat, or I'll gain weight."

The center's clinic will take its first patients in April based on physician referrals, Pont said. Since January 2009, Pont has worked with children and their families in a free, 10-week, after-school program offered through the hospital called Healthy Living Happy Living. It teaches parents and children how to prepare healthy meals and how to be more active, whether through exercise or play. That program will continue at the center, Pont said.

Nearly 1 in 4 Texas fourth-graders and the same percentage in the Central Texas region were obese in 2004-05, based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Deanna Hoelscher, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health Austin regional campus and director of the Michael and Susan Dell Center for the Advancement of Healthy Living at UT. The U.S. average was 19.6 percent.

Pont said that obese children are at risk for ailments that used to crop up in middle age: high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, joint problems and heart disease.

"Some of these kids are going to die in five or 10 years if they are not empowered to make the healthy decisions to take control of their lives," he said.

"As a parent, the scariest thing in the world is to learn your child is in danger," Susan Dell, chairwoman and co-founder of the foundation, said in a statement. "Yet children in Central Texas are shortening their life expectancy every day in a combat zone of fast foods, sugar, limited physical activity, and the lure of electronic games and TV."

A study on the habits of 31,000 U.S. children from 1977 to 2006, released Tuesday by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that children snack almost three times a day on junk food, adding an average of 168 calories a day to their diets. Children ages 2 to 6 ate even more — 182 calories per day in snacks, the study said.

The Dell foundation has invested $60 million in children's health, with $20 million going to obesity prevention, Hussaini said.

"You need clinical efforts, you need schools, you need groups" all working together, Hoelscher said. "That's the real value of this (new) center."

maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619