Valley Program Aims to Combat Youth Obesity

A new initiative in the Valley, spearheaded in part by ’s very own Terry Jones, is looking to get kids eating right and moving more.

The Valley Initiative to Advance Health & Learning in Schools (VITAHLS) is a childhood and adolescent obesity prevention program that was launched in April 2011. Since then, it has succeeded in getting five Valley school districts on board (, Derby, Ansonia, Oxford, Seymour) as well as Emmett O’Brien technical and St. Mary’s/St. Michael’s parochial schools.

Bill Powanda, VITAHLS co-chair and vice president of Griffin Hospital in Derby, said the idea came to fruition when the superintendents met with hospital staff to discuss the growing number of overweight children in schools.

“We proposed that a good setting to address that problem would be in the school systems,” Powanda said, “and we offered to work with the schools to develop a series of programs that would address the issue.”

Those programs, he said, are based on a number of studies developed by the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and Dr. David L. Katz. One of Katz’s programs, “Nutrition Detectives” teaches grammar school children how to read and understand the nutrition packaging labels on cans and boxes.

Using another program method called “ABC for Fitness,” teachers stop class time for a few minutes to let the students perform simple stand-up exercises meant to stimulate them.

“A lot of these kinds of programs are being done in Independence, Missouri, where their initiative has been underway for five years,” Powanda said. “We thought: Why should these tools not be used in our own community?”

The timing has never been better. With sports enrollment at SHS and SIS down due to "pay to play" fees, kids are notably less active.

"Any reduction in physical activity could increase a person’s weight unless replaced by some other form of physical activity or exercise," Powanda said.

Powanda said a planning and development committee met regularly over the 2011 summer months to look at the various components of the plan and “how to intrude them.” Terry Jones of Jones Family Farms has been appointed a commissioner in the process, both locally and on the state level.

“He [Jones] has been very engaged in this whole process,” Powanda said.

He added the state Department of Education is still looking at VITAHLS as a pilot program, with Shelton and the other Valley schools as the leaders.

“Connecticut does not have large school districts so this is a unique model in that it’s a collaboration with seven different school districts,” Powanda said. “The state is supportive. In fact, we’ve arranged a meeting in March with the commissioners of education and agriculture. We look at this as a long-term effort and we’ll continue to add additional programs with, hopefully, some funding from the state.”