New Childhood Obesity Evaluation and Treatment Guidance Features IMI Co-Authors
Institute for Medicaid Innovationon childhood obesity evaluation and treatment. The updated guidance comes more than fifteen years after AAP’s previous recommendations and includes two reports co-authored by the Institute for Medicaid Innovation’s (IMI) national advisory board member and chair of the subcommittee on child and adolescent health, Sandra G. Hassink, MD, MS, FAAP (she/her/hers) and Founding Executive Director Jennifer E. Moore, PhD, RN, FAAN (she/her/hers).
The two technical reports, “Appraisal of Clinical Care Practices for Child Obesity Treatment. Part I: Interventions,” and “Appraisal of Clinical Care Practices for Child Obesity Treatment. Part II: Comorbidities,” serve as the background research for the guidance. The authors find that childhood obesity, “can be treated successfully with the recognition that complex genetic, physiologic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors are at play,” according to a statement released by AAP.
In addition to her affiliation with IMI, Dr. Hassink is the past president of AAP and is the Director of the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight, which commissioned this multi-year initiative to update the guidance.
As chair of the subcommittee on child and adolescent health, Dr. Hassink has uplifted child and adolescent obesity as one of many critical issues the subcommittee addresses. The AAP reports build on multiple years of cumulative work between Drs. Hassink and Moore in this field. Dr. Hassink has testified before Congress on childhood obesity, food insecurity, and hunger with a focus on supporting the foundations of child health as part of her over three-decade career in obesity prevention and treatment.
Learn more about IMI’s work on childhood and adolescent obesity here.
About the Institute for Medicaid Innovation
The Institute for Medicaid Innovation (IMI) is a national 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization that provides independent information and analysis to inform Medicaid policy and improve the health of the nation.
About the American Academy of Pediatrics
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.
