About the Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition

The Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition offers a comprehensive approach to weight management in children, including programs for both prevention and treatment.

One component of the Center focuses on programs for the home, school and community environments in order to ensure the development of healthy lifestyles. To help address this aim, the Center created the Snackwise® software, a tool to assess the nutritional quality of processed, packaged snack foods.

In collaboration with other Ohio experts in nutrition, the Center works with physicians to present the Ounce of Prevention program to parents, providing a stepwise approach to establishing healthful food and activity habits early in life. As part of its commitment to prevention, the Center works closely with the Healthy and Fit Coalition to provide a coordinated approach to obesity in Central Ohio, with Action for Healthy Kids, a national and state coalition to optimize Ohio's schools in terms of nutrition and activity, with the United Way Health Vision Council, as well as with several other local organizations and agencies.

For children who are already overweight, the center offers family-based Medical Weight Management Programs, New U Flex, New U Weekly and New U Jr. covering everyday diet and fitness education to re-establish a more healthy weight. For those who have medical complications related to their weight, a more in-depth, long-term program is provided.

Ultimately, some children's complications may necessitate a surgical approach. The Center offers three options for those who meet the criteria, one using the traditional gastric bypass surgery to decrease stomach size and limit daily food intake; another uses the new adjustable gastric band procedure which, through surgical placement of an inflatable cuff, circles the stomach to limit its size. A third procedure is known as gastric sleeve surgery and involves removing a large part of the stomach, and the remainder is closed to make a tube-like “sleeve."