One provision included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA, (Section 4306) appropriates $25 million in funding for the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, which was established through the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 and adjusts the demonstration time period to fiscal years 2010 through 2014. Under this provision of the law, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services will award grants to eligible entities to develop a comprehensive and systematic model for reducing childhood obesity.
If this provision is similar to what is in CHIPRA, community-based entities that work through schools, community health workers, and local health care delivery will likely be eligible to apply for Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project grants, and similar program priorities, funding, and reporting guidelines will continue to apply.
If these demonstration projects are found to be successful in reducing childhood obesity, then legislative action will be required to expand and continue the grants. Some of the programs expected to be funded through the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project may be similar to the School Nutrition Policy Initiative in Philadelphia that included the following components: nutrition education; nutrition policy; social marketing; and parent outreach. That initiative ultimately demonstrated that “a multicomponent school-based intervention [could] be effective in curbing the development of overweight among children in grades 4 through 6.”
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