WESTFIELD—A program from Baystate Children’s Hospital to help battle childhood obesity will be expanding to Westfield next week at the YMCA of Greater Westfield.
The MIGHTY Program will be expanded to Westfield, with classes beginning Feb. 8. The program, which stands for “Moving, Improving, and Gaining Health Together,” provides a number of health-related training and counseling for children and their families.
“We’re trying to work with families around making long-term changes, what are the barriers to those changes,” Dr. Chrystal Wittcopp, medical director of Baystate General Pediatrics, said of the program’s goals.
The program is free to children between 10 and 13 years old as long as enrolled by Feb. 8, and runs every other week on Tuesdays for six months, with two and a half hour-long sessions. It is held at the YMCA in Westfield, and participants also get a free family membership to the facility during the program.
According to a press release from Baystate, the program provides fitness evaluations and prescriptions, group exercise sessions, individual and group counseling on nutrition, as well strategies for maintaining health.
The YMCA of Greater Westfield will be the site of the MIGHTY Program (WNG File Photo)
According to Wittcopp, the program includes group-based classes that are both age-specific and engage the whole family in the process. Some of the activities include hands-on nutrition and visual aids to assist in portion control.
Specifically, Wittcopp said that they utilize a multi-component program that looks “at all three layers of what we know impact people’s abilities to have healthy weight,” which is nutrition, a healthy core and behavior modification.
Wittcopp said that obesity and weight in youth are prevalent issues, including in the western Massachusetts area. Wittcopp said that depending on the community, 20 to 25 percent of children could be considered obese, with up to 40 percent being considered overweight.
She said that it is higher in Springfield, where the numbers are higher than national norms, while lower in Westfield, but that it is still a “fairly significant portion in our area.”
She said that while the numbers have been stable over the last three to four years, the numbers have been steadily rising over the last 20 years.
Risks related to these issues, according to Wittcopp, can include “the whole gamut of what we thought were adult onset diseases.”
This includes type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver, high cholesterol and sleep apnea in children.
