NP30 Children's Healthy Living Center of Excellence (CHL Center) Year 1

Abstract

Objective To serve as a Center of Excellence to further build capacity and new knowledge for collective impact on child health in the US Affiliated Pacific Region. Description CHL Center continues to strengthen capacity with the Child Health in the Pacific (CHAP) Summer Fellowship Program and the CHL Dietetics Scholarship Program (CHLD), the CHL Summer Institute. Ten fellows from CNMI, Guam and Hawai‘i completed the CHAP Summer Fellowship program and the CHL Summer Institute had a total of 123 students completing online courses (nine offered) related to childhood obesity. To examine the CHL intervention's long-term impact, retraining and standardization workshops are being conducted; and data collection has begun. Eighteen community reports provide a comprehensive compilation of data already collected, and CHL data are available for continued analysis to fill the void in basic nutrition and health information of children in the region. A CHL network multistate project (W1194) has expanded CHL's reach, with members from Arizona and West Virginia. Evaluation The published CHL intervention effect showed significant improvement in intervention communities compared with control in overweight and obesity prevalence (effect size [d] = −3.95%; 95% CI, −7.47% to −0.43%), waist circumference (d = −0.71 cm; 95% CI, −1.37 to −0.05 cm), and acanthosis nigricans prevalence (d = −2.28%; 95% CI, −2.77% to −1.57%). Greater differences existed among intervention communities in acanthosis nigricans prevalence in the group aged 2 to 5 years (−3.99%) vs the group aged 6 to 8 years (−3.40%), and the interaction was significant (d = 0.59%, P Conclusion and Implications Year one built on efforts established by the CHL program to build the CHL Center of Excellence.