Childhood obesity carries risks of disease and increased need for medical care even before adulthood. Data indicate that obese children are at significantly increased risk for diabetes, asthma, chronic illness, and poor mental health compared with their healthy-weight peers. Obese children tend to become obese adults.

To help address the issue of childhood obesity among 2-5-year-olds, The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation has funded two years of a pilot program called Jump To It: A Happy, Healthy Me. This school-based, early childhood obesity prevention program is being carried out in collaboration with three partners – Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), University Hospitals/Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, and The Children’s Museum of Cleveland. The collaborative has developed an innovative intervention to promote a healthy lifestyle for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children and their families that is incorporated within the existing CMSD pre-K and K curriculum. The goal of the program is to develop sustained attitudes and habits that promote healthy lifestyle and prevent obesity.

An important component of the program is a companion series of parent sessions. The three sponsoring partners discovered that few programs aim to prevent early childhood obesity even though many 2-5-year-olds are already overweight/obese. The Jump To It curriculum addresses the real need for a comprehensive obesity prevention program that embeds lessons on nutrition, physical activity, and healthy behaviors into the curriculum for pre-K and kindergarten children.

Early results from the pilot program demonstrate significant gains in knowledge for Jump To It participants. It is possible that Cleveland’s Jump To It curriculum may become a model for a school-based prevention approach to early childhood obesity. Included in the Jump To It program is a goal to change the school environment to improve the nutritional value of school meals and increase physical activity. The pilot program is being led by a multidisciplinary team of educators, a physician, dietitian, exercise physiologist, child psychologist, and public health and policy experts. The partners hope to disseminate their findings at upcoming national meetings.