HOPE’S obesity prevention initiative involves the development, testing and eventual dissemination of a family and school prevention program for preschoolers. This programmatic effort focuses on reducing the high rates of childhood obesity in ethnic minority families living in low-income, urban neighborhoods. The program aims to support families in their efforts to establish healthy home environments for children and to provide children with the knowledge and skills to make healthy choices at home and at school.

This obesity prevention program builds on the ParentCorps program, a highly successful intervention developed by Dr. Laurie Miller Brotman, HOPE’s Director.The ParentCorps program is an after-school program for families of preschoolers that has been demonstrated to enhance positive parenting practices, increase parent involvement in school, promote child social and emotional competencies and prevent the development of conduct problems by the end of Kindergarten. The program was developed specifically for low-income families living in urban communities.

Through HOPE’s support, ParentCorps has been enhanced to include components to promote healthy eating, increase physical activity, decrease sedentary activity (TV and other “screen time”), and promote healthy sleep habits. The program is delivered in the preschool period since this is when specific risk factors for obesity have their greatest influence. Under the leadership of Dr. Spring Dawson-McClure, the new program has been successfully pilot tested with 20 families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The pilot study will provide the foundation for a large-scale evaluation of this innovative program with low-income families of preschoolers attending Pre-Kindergarten in NYC public schools.Once the program’s effectiveness is established, HOPE will seek to disseminate the program to school districts and communities nationwide so that thousands of children and families can benefit.

HOPE supports several additional prevention research studies:

• Dr. Brotman and Dr. Dawson-McClure are also studying specific family and school risk factors for obesity in low-income, ethnically diverse families, including Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and African American families. These studies focus on individual, family and neighborhood risk factors for overweight in high-risk children. Such factors include prenatal exposure to tobacco, television viewing, and specific parenting practices related to eating and physical activity. Ethnic minority children from low-income families in urban communities are at great risk for developing obesity in adolescence and adulthood. Yet the specific factors that contribute to this risk are not known.

• HOPE investigators Dr. Keng-Yen Huang and Dr. Brotman are studying the interrelations between mental health problems and overweight. Preliminary evidence indicates that children with mental health problems, such as depression or conduct problems, are more likely to become overweight, and that there are significant mental health consequences of being overweight. These studies focus on developmental models for understanding the emergence of mental health problems and overweight from preschool through adolescence.