Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program (HELP) is designed to help overweight children aged 5-12 years and their families adopt healthier eating habits and increase physical activity. The emphasis is on long-term lifestyle changes (making better food choices, integrating physical activity into their every day lives, decreasing screen-time to < 2 hr/day), rather than short-term diets. The Olympic Food Guide is a tool that was developed to help participants make healthier food choices. Each child and his/her primary caretaker participate in a series of five weekly workshops conducted at a convenient site in the community. The majority of our workshops take place at the Salvation Army Red Shield Youth and Community Center in Pico-Union. The Center offers a full range of exercise choices including aerobics, free weights, soccer, basketball, karate, swimming, ballet and drill team. Families receive free yearlong membership at the Center for completing the five workshop series. Families may also participate in weekly support group meetings facilitated by a social worker to share success stories and problem solve barriers to their new lifestyle changes. Six months after completing the workshop series, participants reconvene for the sixth workshop and a reassessment of their health status and activity and nutrition assessments.
HELP was developed in collaboration with Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Huntington Memorial Hospital, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and the National Health Foundation.
For more information, please call (213) 742-5838.
