Partnership targets obesity among children

Lauren Dettloff

A better understanding of obesity among American Indian children is being gained through a joint effort among the UW Medical School, the Department of Family Medicine, Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, and the Menominee, Lac du Flambeau and Bad River communities.

Obesity is a significant risk factor for the development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Nationwide, American Indian children have high rates of obesity.

The Wisconsin Nutrition and Growth Study, led by Alexandra Adams, seeks to determine the prevalence and contributing risk factors for obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes in American Indian children; examine early family and environmental factors affecting obesity; and design community early intervention programs.

“What do we need to do and how early do we need to do it?” asks Adams, an assistant professor in nutritional sciences and family medicine. “That’s what we hope to find out.”

In 1999, Adams received start-up money from the UW Medical School, the Department of Family Medicine and the state Division of Public Health. Her project is now funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Division of Public Health.

The Wisconsin Nutrition and Growth Study uses an approach that builds a mutually respectful partnership between the researchers and the community being studied. With WINGS, much value is placed on the knowledge generated from the experience, lives and self-concept of American Indians.

“This is a bottom-up, grassroots effort,” Adams says. “We work extremely hard to make sure we are balancing the interests of the university with those of the American Indian communities.”

Adams and her colleagues have conducted screenings among the children, designed and distributed surveys to parents, and collected data from the federal Women, Infant and Children nutrition program.

Although the analysis is in its early stages, Adams has already started to see trends. In one group of 350 children, 44 percent were overweight and, of those, 26 percent were obese. Among the obese children, more than 30 percent had three or more risk factors for metabolic syndrome, a group of symptoms linked to type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

WINGS builds on data already collected in the American Indian communities that, due to environmental and financial difficulties, many communities did not know how to utilize.

“An assessment of the data was missing,” Adams says. “And that is what we try to bring.”

Others from the Department of Family Medicine working with WINGS include Ron Prince, Heather Webert and Sridhar Reddy.