Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Aug 8, 2016; 5(3): 234-243
Published online Aug 8, 2016. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v5.i3.234
Reducing childhood obesity through coordinated care: Development of a park prescription program
Sarah E Messiah, Sandy Jiang, Jack Kardys, Eric Hansen, Maria Nardi, Lourdes Forster
Sarah E Messiah, Division of Community-Based Research and Training, Mailman Center for Child Development, Department of Pediatrics, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33130, United States
Sarah E Messiah, Sandy Jiang, Department of Public Health Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33130, United States
Jack Kardys, Eric Hansen, Maria Nardi, Miami Dade County Department of Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces, Miami, FL 33128, United States
Lourdes Forster, Department of Pediatrics, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33130, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed to the design of the program; Messiah SE prepared the first draft of the manuscript; all other authors provided professional and scientific recommendations, edits and corrections to the final work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflicts-of-interest to report for any authors.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sarah E Messiah, MPH, PhD, Research Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Division of Community-Based Research and Training, Mailman Center for Child Development, Department of Pediatrics, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, 1580 NW 10th Avenue, Miami, FL 33130, United States. smessiah@med.miami.edu
Telephone: +1-305-2431943 Fax: +1-305-2438475
Received: April 19, 2016
Peer-review started: April 29, 2016
First decision: May 13, 2016
Revised: May 24, 2016
Accepted: June 1, 2016
Article in press: June 3, 2016
Published online: August 8, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Childhood obesity continues to be a vexing clinical and public health challenge and is an epidemic that will not be solved in silos. Instead, coordinated, collective partnerships in multiple sectors such as government, health care, school/afterschool, the family, and the community give the most promise for sustainability of healthy weight in children and adolescents. The described Parks Rx 4HealthTM program will enhance care coordination among pediatricians, families and community-based providers to encourage and monitor overweight/obese youth. It will be increasingly important to capitalize on existing resources such as local park systems to conduct prevention efforts to lower current obesity and related comorbidity trends.