School-Based Obesity Prevention Interventions Show Promising Improvements in the Health and Academic Achievements among Ethnically Diverse Young Children

School-based obesity prevention programs-which include a combination of changes to school-provided meals, nutrition and healthy lifestyle education, and physical activity-show promise in improving health and academic achievement of young children. This is particularly true among school-aged children from low-income backgrounds. In light of recent dramatic increases in the prevalence of obesity in the United States, the results presented in this chapter are quite encouraging, given that many children from low-income backgrounds receive a significant proportion of their daily nutrition requirements at school. Obesity prevention programming based on the research presented here is resulting in the creation of "obesity prevention laboratories," whereby schools are hubs of prevention activity. Such laboratories are especially important in current agriculture, school policy, and public health-based obesity prevention context. Poststudy programmatic expansion efforts, such as the HOPE2 Project, a $2 million obesity prevention project recently funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, are attempting to address this concern through the development of community-based partnerships to expand on and extend outward (from schools) the nutrition and healthy living interventions.