Childhood Obesity: The Role of Health Policy - Association of ...

Strategy 2: Increase the knowledge and skills of clinical providers to effectively prevent,
identify and manage children and families affected by obesity.
• All clinical providers should achieve and maintain proficiency in the prevention, identification and
management of childhood obesity. At a minimum, all providers should be encouraged to measure and
plot BMI as a vital sign.
• Health professional schools (e.g. medicine, nursing, dentistry, nutritionists, and public health) should
work together to develop undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate core competencies (including
knowledge and skills) and curricula for childhood obesity that should be used across professions and
settings.
• Health professional associations should work together to build on their current educational offerings
at their local, state and national member meetings to integrate these competencies into didactic,
distance, and experiential learning.
• Given the demographics of the obesity epidemic, a focus on cultural and linguistic competence should
be included in all health professional educational efforts to address low income, minority, low health
literacy and limited English proficient families.
• Membership associations (including professional associations and industry trade groups) should,
with foundation support, develop training for aspiring champions, as well as a support network to
share tools and best practices among champions, including champions working at the community
level, the health system or plan level, and all levels of government.
• Health plans should continue to assist their participating providers in acquiring the knowledge skills
and tools they need to effectively prevent, identify, and manage childhood obesity.
• Health plans should provide incentives for providers to address childhood obesity, including
incentives linked to direct measurement (e.g., BMI as a vital sign), to improvement, or to adopt EHRs
that allow for BMI plotting.
• Improvement collaboratives to share knowledge and improvement approaches should be organized to
bring together teams of practitioners at various levels – within a community, across a state, in a
region, or nationally.
• State governments, working in partnership with their state academic institutions, should sponsor
and sustain long -term efforts to focus on low-income children and families, given the impact of
obesity on state Medicaid budgets.
Strategy 3: Provide adequate financing for obesity-related services
• A model benefit to address the prevention, identification and treatment of childhood obesity should
be designed and demonstrations sponsored within the public (i.e., Medicaid and SCHIP) and private
sectors. This benefit should include alternative modes of service delivery (e.g., group counseling) and
specific supportive services (e.g., case management).
• All health care payers (including public, private and self-insured employer plans) should not only
cover a full range of preventive and interventional obesity-related services, but ensure that
reimbursement levels are adequate to spur provider delivery of this benefit.
• All health care payers (including public, private and self-insured employer plans) should widely publicize
20