Researchers at University of Utah Health will lead a six-state research initiative to prevent childhood obesity after receiving $5 million in federal funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Mountain West Prevention Research Center, based at U of U Health, will collaborate with organizations around the state as well as Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada to discover ways to reduce childhood obesity, especially in rural communities.

“It’s important to think about childhood obesity and how it can contribute to lifelong disease and the ability to function as a human,” said Amy Locke, co-director of the Driving Diabetes Initiative and one of the participating researchers. “If you can help children when they’re young, you can see them make changes in their health over the course of their lives.”

In the past 40 years, obesity rates in children have quadrupled, which raises the risk of serious conditions like Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in children. Researchers said the condition, which often is driven by food insecurity or lack of access to exercise and other physical activities, is more common in low-income families and those from rural areas.

In Utah, childhood obesity rates are lower than many other states in the nation. In 2019, 9.3% of Utah public high school kids were obese, while 12.1% of third grade boys and 8.3% of third grade girls were obese, according to the Utah Department of Health and Human Resources. The obesity rate for students in grades 8, 10 and 12 was lower in Summit County and northeastern Utah, but higher in Weber, Morgan and Tooele counties.

Paul Estabrooks, professor of health and kinesiology in the U’s College of Health, director of the Mountain West Prevention Research Center and a principal investigator for the core project, said the social aspect of intervention is crucial.

“We’ve found in our early research that bringing people together on a weekly basis, even in rural areas, creates an excellent social network that results in sustained health behavior changes and obesity reduction,” he said. “In our area, families in lower income (brackets) have a 26% higher risk in rural areas. Our goal is to help change lifestyle behavior and give them tools for lifetime success.”

Rural communities also have their own culture, Estabrooks said. One of the best ways to make something culturally relevant is to rely on local strengths and develop capacity to sustain program implementation.

“Having people that have knowledge of the community is a necessity to having the impact that we’re hoping to achieve,” he said. “We have many, many chronic diseases that through regular physical activity and healthy eating, we can avoid.”

Estabrooks said the hope is to teach these habits to kids while they’re young, so they don’t end up at the doctor’s office with complications later in life.