HEALTH Targets Adolescents

A Boston-area public service group is launching a new mentoring initiative aimed at helping adolescents at risk for diabetes develop healthy lifestyles.

Project HEALTH (Helping Empower, Advocate & Lead Through Health), in collaboration with the endocrinology department of Boston Medical Center (BMC), is seeking to educate children diagnosed as pre-diabetics about health issues and motivate them to change their lifestyles in order to prevent the onset of type-2 diabetes.

The new program, called STRENGTH and set to launch this semester, will target children—especially those from low-income families—with chronic medical conditions such as obesity. The program will provide its participants with mentoring in group sessions and on an individual basis with college student volunteers to reduce their risk of developing diabetes.

“Our curriculum for the STRENGTH program includes weekly lectures about nutrition, physical fitness, and mental health aimed to...address challenges that kids and their families are facing, and one-on-one mentoring sessions to provide individual attention and support for kids to make changes in lifestyle,” according to Beth Adler, youth programs manager for Project HEALTH.

This past fall, 81 Harvard undergraduates served as volunteer mentors for Project HEALTH. One student, Obinna O. Orji ’08, is now the project coordinator for STRENGTH and helped to design its curriculum by collecting surveys from patients and their families at the BMC’s Endocrinology Clinic on the health issues about which they would like to learn.

Recent medical research shows that the obesity epidemic both worldwide and in the United States now affects not only the adult population, but also youths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the share of youths between ages six and 19 who are overweight has more than tripled in the past 25 years.

The STRENGTH program is designed to combat this trend of increased childhood obesity, which predisposes youths to develop severe health problems, including type-2 diabetes.

There are currently 300 children at BMC who are deemed at high risk for developing type-2 diabetes, according to Michelle L. Niescierenko, a resident physician at the BMC and the Children’s Hospital who serves as a resource for medical guidance and support for the mentors and patients involved in STRENGTH.

“The STRENGTH program is definitely exciting in that it actively seeks children who may be on the way to becoming a diabetic and prevents them from going down that road,” said Carol A. Fisher, diabetes educator in the Pediatric Endocrinology Clinic of the BMC.

STRENGTH will also provide educational opportunities for the families of pre-diabetic children, which are also likely to be at risk for obesity and related health diseases, Fisher said.