“Adolescent health is one of the big emphasis areas here,” reports Deanna M. Hoelscher, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the Human Nutrition Center at the UT School of Public Health. “We found, through a program called CATCH, that we could go into schools and lower the fat in school meals, increase physical activity kids get, and change their eating and exercise habits.”

“The behaviors we learn as children carry forward into adulthood... With CATCH, we’re focusing on behaviors
that lead to chronic diseases.”

CATCH (A Coordinated Approach to Child Health) helps parents, classroom and physical education teachers, food
service officials and nurses to provide a healthy diet and exercise for elementary students. These behavioral changes can help to avoid cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, explains Steven H. Kelder, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research. Kelder and Hoelscher are co-principal investigators of CATCH.

Some 1,500 Texas elementary schools have adopted the program, teaching more than 650,000 children how to be healthy for a lifetime. And several states have followed Texas’ lead, with an estimated one million kids involved to date.

CATCH has received widespread support and endorsement from state and educational agencies. They include the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Department of State Health Services’ Diabetes Council, and Texas Council on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke. But one of the best endorsements, in Hoelscher’s opinion, has come from the
Texas legislature.

Hoelscher, Kelder and the CATCH staff successfully worked with stakeholders and policymakers to incorporate the program in all Texas schools. One result is Senate Bill 19 (Texas Education Code Section 38.013), which includes a requirement that students in the state’s elementary schools get 30 minutes of physical activity every day, or 135 minutes a week.

CATCH is only one of numerous studies on adolescents at the school of public health. Another major project is “Healthy Passages,” the first community-based, long-term study to determine children’s future health behaviors and risk for disease. The project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will follow thousands of children of diverse ethnicities in Texas, Alabama and California for 12 years. Healthy Passages is directed by Susan Tortolero, Ph.D., Director of the Texas Prevention Research Center.

One of the newest and most innovative studies at the UT School of Public Health is a smoking prevention and cessation program for high school students. It employs an interactive, multimedia CDROM for student participants who like computers but don’t like to join stop-smoking programs. The results of a randomized controlled trial of 16 local high schools look promising, says Steven Kelder, the principal investigator.