 | |
|
| |
| Forum participants | |
Staff Photo by Danielle Moore
John Bilderback, program manager for Step ONE, an obesity prevention program in Chattanooga, speaks during a Tennessee Obesity Task Force meeting at the YMCA in downtown Chattanooga on Tuesday. The group met to address nutrition, physical activity and obesity concerns in the Tennessee area.
Diverse groups working to promote healthy lifestyles in Tennessee must work together instead of pursuing their individual programs, a health advocate said Tuesday.
"It's time to shed the ownership and pull stuff together for one message," Bill Rush, who works at the local YMCA, said at a community forum on obesity. "We have to give up our selfishness."
Almost 20 people, mostly health care professionals, exercise and nutrition specialists and public health advocates for healthy living, attended the event at the downtown YMCA.
At Tuesday's forum and others recently held across the state, members of the Tennessee Obesity Task Force have sought insight from professionals and the public, said Joan Randall, the forum facilitator. She is administrative director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Obesity and Metabolism/Diabetes Center.
The planning sessions are funded by a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some at the meeting said Chattanooga already has a number of healthy-living initiatives with focuses ranging from access to healthful foods to building walkable communities to promoting breast feeding.
"There's so much going on in Chattanooga we didn't know about," Ms. Randall said after the discussion. "I can see Chattanooga as being a model for a lot of things that we build on."
A focus on teaching basic nutrition in schools and after-school programs has taken the spotlight off the importance of parents imparting basic healthy lifestyle lessons, said attendee Erica Rachels, a senior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Forum participants also discussed the challenges of putting good ideas into practice.
Attendee Russell Cliche, director of the coordinated school health department in Hamilton County Schools, expressed frustration at time and budget shortages that create barriers to greater activity and healthier school lunches.
"I was one that came in saying, 'I'm going to change the world,'" he said. "You get in there and you see, 'Wow, there are all these dimensions.'"
Rossville, Ga., resident James Allmond said that the morbidly obese face specific challenges and doctors' orders to just "quit eating" don't do any good, he said.
"It's constantly banging on you all the time, 'Lose weight. Quit eating,'" said Mr. Allmond, who weighs 525 pounds. "You can't quit eating. It's like drugs. You can go to the clinic and get help with drugs. ... You've got to eat to live. So you can't go to the clinic to get help."
Transcript of a live online chat with Kristen and Kevin Harvey
UPCOMING COVERAGE
Friday: Dentists' offices buy Halloween candy back from children. News.
Saturday: What food stamp can be used for.
SHARE YOUR STORIES
Have you lost a lot of weight? Tell us how you did it. Share your success stories, frustrations, diet and exercise tips, before-and-after photos, recipes and questions and story ideas. E-mail us at news@timesfreepress.com and please out "shape" in the subject line.
FAST FACT
Tennessee is one of 25 states to receive grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help establish consistency in statewide efforts to counter rising obesity rates as well as target approaches to the problem by region.
Text Size:
Well it looks like there will be a lot of work in putting together all those upcoming stories revolving around obesity and good health. I don't guess Ms. Bregel will ever have time to do the story on the way the Hamilton County School System deals with mentally ill children. She said she was going to do a story about the alleged abuse of a young girl named Carmen by the school system here but never followed through. Since Ms.Bregel said she would do the story, Carmen has been unjustly taken away from her mother and placed in foster care.Her treatment in the foster care system,2 counties away, was so bad that she became worse and has been put in a psychiatric hospital.The Hamilton County School System is still thinking about nothing but attendance at all cost. There is a story on page A12 about children and weight gain from psychiatric drugs. It wasn't written by Ms. Bregel though. Emily....you have let the children down that have mental illness and are under the control of the Hamilton County School System.
When I posted," Emily....you have let the children down that have mental illness and are under the control of the Hamilton County School System." I did not mean that Emily Bregel was under the control of the Hamilton County School System. I meant "children" under the school system's control. Those who are too poor to attend private school. And those whose parents are too poor to afford lawyers when the school system decides it's cheaper to take the kid away from the parents instead of "making suitable accommodations" for those children who have serious mental illnesses. You think the school system is not the one to take the child out of the home??? Think again. They have secret meetings with juvenile court personnel and DCS workers and the child's fate is determined before the kangaroo juvenile court ever opens it's doors. Shame on Hamilton County. The Hamilton County School System wipes their rear ends on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Try to get your child an IEP and see what happens.
Hamilton County is turning out students that are not only obese but uneducated. The graduates won't even be able to get into a Volkswagen much less build one. Dr. Scales and his crew of thugs couldn't teach a dog to fetch a stick.
"Attendee Russell Cliche, director of the coordinated school health department in Hamilton County Schools, expressed frustration at time and budget shortages that create barriers to greater activity and healthier school lunches."
If the School System can't even come up with healthier lunches....how do you expect them to deal with mentally ill children? I'll tell you how they do it now. They label the mentally ill child in a lot of cases as a "TRUANT" and drag them in front of the kangaroo Juvenile Court and have them taken away from their parents and placed in abusive foster care settings where the foster parents don't have a clue about mental illness. DCS is a full partner in these "RAILROADINGS". Advocates are not even allowed in the hearings. The Juvenile Court Referees talk to the parents like dogs.Then take their children away from them. Shame on Hamilton County.