From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Childhood Obesity Description: We cover government strategies for tackling childhood obesity Related GAO Work: GAO-20-30: Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration: Efforts to Identify Effective Strategies for Low-Income Children Released: October 2019 [ Background Music ] [ John Dicken: ] Obesity among children is a large long-term issue and so there's no one solution. [ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. Childhood obesity affects nearly 14 million American children, including around 20 percent of children in low-income families. And studies suggest obese children are likely to become overweight or obese adults. Joining me is John Dicken, a Health Care director, and he's going to talk about a GAO report looking at the government's response to this obesity issue. Thanks for joining me, John. [ John Dicken: ] Thank you. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, does it look like an obesity solution is coming? [ John Dicken: ] Well, certainly, obesity among children is a large long-term issue and so there's no one solution, but certainly it is an area where the federal government, along with other groups, public, and private, and healthcare groups are working to try to find effective ways to help prevent or treat where obesity among children, and particularly among low-income children. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, what's the federal government doing about it today? [ John Dicken: ] Well, we looked specifically at a set of programs that the Centers for Disease Control, as part of the federal -- Department of Health and Human Services has -- to provide grants to different communities to try to identify, and evaluate, and ultimately disseminate, some approaches to try to prevent or reduce obesity. The CDC has given, now in its third round of grants of that program, has completed some evaluations of different approaches that can be effective in treating or preventing childhood obesity, or evaluating the effectiveness of some of those strategies. And has moved on to trying to look at ways that you can have tools to expand that beyond the particular grantees that -- that were being evaluated. [ Matt Oldham: ] And are we seeing any results from these grants? [ John Dicken: ] The results were mixed, there--there were positive result for a number of the interventions, things like nutritional counseling, individualized assistance to low-income families and their children did show some positive improvement in terms of lowering BMI, of increasing fruit and vegetable intake, reducing screen time. Some of those results were modest and not all were statistically significant, but there have been evaluations have found that a combination of public health and primary care approaches in some cases can effectively make modest improvements in preventing or reducing the childhood obesity. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] So, it sounds like the CDC has grants designed to help, develop, and carry out strategies to reducing childhood obesity. And they've seen some improvements from their efforts. John, does this report hint at more success with a broader application or a broader implementation? [ John Dicken: ] As the grant program has continued on to later phases, it's been a real focus. And so, kind of two pieces that have come about, one is that the early experience has shown some challenges in implementing these programs in various communities, it really requires commitment of the communities, of -- there's often a lot of turnover, it needs parental involvement. So, it's going to bear understanding and some of the challenges that can occur that can try to be addressed as to implement some of these strategies in other communities. And also, has moved now to try to develop some tools and approaches that could be used, either educational materials, or information that's more evidence-based to help communities to actually implement some of these beyond the selected grantees. That's still ongoing, CDC still has funding for the next few years and is in the early stages of its third round of grants, but that's really the focus now is how to actually turn evidence into practice and to try to apply some of these in other communities. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, as we begin to wrap up here, what's the bottom line of the report? [ John Dicken: ] Well, really given the concerning extent to which especially low-income children or disproportionately have obesity and some of the health effects that those can have, the CDC program is--is an attempt to evaluate and identify ways that can be used and actually applied in community settings. And so, as demonstrated, some areas are particularly successful in doing so and trying to identify ways that can address some of the challenges that they also found and roll that out further in other communities. [ Matt Oldham: ] John Dicken was talking about a GAO report on government strategies for tackling childhood obesity. Thank you for your time, John. [ John Dicken: ] Thank you. [ Background Music] [ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.