TCNJ tests 'SNACK' phys ed program targeting childhood obesity in local elementary schools

TRENTON -- With music blasting from a stereo, the Trenton second graders in Chris Studley's gym class moved through a rotation of six workout stations, each with its own challenge.

They threw medicine balls against the wall, moved battling ropes up and down, bear crawled with a balloon between their legs and spun around on boards in a Superman pose.

The Columbus Elementary School students are acting as a test case of sorts for a collaborative program with faculty and students from the College of New Jersey's School of Nursing, Health and Exercise Science.

Smart Nutrition Activity and Conditioning in Kids, or SNACK, was made possible with a $50,000 grant from Novo Nordisk. Antheil Elementary School in Ewing is also involved in the program.

The emphasis is on fun, all the while helping them to improve their muscle strength and coordination.

"If we can make kids stronger and improve their motor skills -- jumping, hopping and skipping -- they will move more," said Avery Faigenbaum, a professor of exercise science and lead researcher.

"If we get these kids playing more outside, they're watching less television inside, they're engaged more with friends and more likely to be more physically active and eating less of the foods they shouldn't be eating," he said.

SNACK's big-picture goal is to reduce the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes. A 2010 New Jersey Childhood Obesity Survey found that a higher percentage of Trenton public school children are overweight or obese. Nearly 1 in 2 Trenton children in every age category is overweight or obese and more than 1 in 4 children in every age category is obese.

"Are we going to target these kids now or are we going to wait until they go to high school?" Faigenbaum said, adding that kids who are overweight and obese in elementary school have an 80 percent chance of staying that way. "It sticks so it's naive to believe that children at the age of 12 automatically become active or automatically make healthy food choices."

He said that it's easier to start when they're young because their habits are still being formed and they have not yet become resistant to interventions.

"We hope these kids enter middle school with positive behaviors that carry over into adulthood," he said.

TCNJ nursing major Christine Castelluber, 20, said programs like these will go a long way in preventing diabetes and heart disease.

"It's like a nursing intervention," she said. "If you catch it before it happens, you prevent all of this from happening."

The SNACK program also focuses on teaching students to make healthier food choices. Following the 15-minute circuit, the TCNJ students led them through a nutrition lesson before playing a relay race-type game. Armed with cards that had pictures of different foods on the front and the exercise required to burn off the calories on the back, the teams raced to drop them in the appropriate bucket: healthy, not healthy and in-between.

The biggest challenge to implementing long-term change, they said, is the fact that they only have 40 minutes, twice a week -- and they were only given a second day because of the grant.

"My dream is every day," Faigenbaum said, pointing out recent studies that show that physical activity has positive effects on academic performance. "If phys ed class is engaging and challenging, it turns on their brain."

SNACK is an 8-week program bookended by two weeks of pre- and post-testing, and even in that short time, the teachers and TCNJ students have seen noticeable improvements. Each week, they tweak the stations to make them slightly more challenging.

"Things are becoming much easier because they're getting stronger," Studley said. "And they're learning something. It's hard to learn something one day and implement it in your life, but when it's repetitious, then it becomes easy."

The students' before and after results will be compared to those of a control group -- another second-grade class that has traditional physical education.

"The real question is are they more active?" Faigenbaum said. "Do they perform better in a classroom? Are they going to go home and say, 'Mom, I want fruits and vegetables.' That's the hope and that's the dream for us to continue this."

Moving forward, Studley said he would continue to incorporate the circuit across the different grade levels and find ways to get parents more involved.

"If we're only given once a week with the kids, the responsibility is going to fall on the parents to keep the kids in shape and have them enjoy exercise," he said.

The program also lets the TCNJ students apply what they learn in the classroom.

"Students learn theory in class, but it's another thing to test 25 children and 20 can't even do one push-up and the five that can, the form isn't that good," Faigenbaum said. "But on a positive note, they are seeing what can happen when you go in with targeted intervention."

TCNJ junior Jessica Waldeck, 21, a health and physical education major, said she loves the idea that they can teach strength training to kids as young as 7 years old.

"We're creating young athletes and even if they don't play a sport, they're still going to be able to move like athletes," she said. "I didn't learn all this stuff until I was in high school and the fact that we're teaching them now, it's something that they can carry with them and build off of."

Cristina Rojas may be reached at crojas@njtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaRojasTT. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.

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