Let's Go! - A five year childhood obesity prevention demonstration project

Obesity continues to be a major problem with close to a third of Maine's youth being overweight or obese. Let's Go! is a multi-sector childhood obesity prevention program working to create a social movement that supports healthy eating and active living. This social change involves changing policies and environments in the twelve communities of Greater Portland, Maine. With a limited evidence base, rapid dissemination of successful models is critical to accelerate awareness and facilitate policy and environmental change. The purpose of this presentation is to share the model and evaluation results. Let's Go!'s primary goal is to increase the proportion of children living at a healthy weight in Greater Portland by promoting increased physical activity and healthy eating. The Let's Go! model consists of implementing complementary interventions in 6 settings using the 5-2-1-0 healthy living message. A social marketing campaign with reinforcing messaging links the sectors. The presentation will focus on the model; review the individual sector interventions with schools, healthcare providers, early childhood, worksites, communities and the social marketing campaign and present evaluation data from the initial five year period. The presentation will review the evaluation and present statistically significant results as well as areas of promising impact. The significant level of local business leadership (including local supermarket chains, health insurance companies, banks, non-profits and hospitals) and private foundations has been central to success, providing the vision, community connections and a five-year funding base.