Message: Fat Kids Cost Us Money

Sections

Neighborhoods

Features

NHI Newsletter

Legal Notices

Some Favorite Sites

Government/ Community Links

by Paul Bass | Sep 19, 2006 11:33 am

(2) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Arts

Obesity has tripled for young kids in Connecticut. The pricetag to us: $856 million, and growing. So revealed this woman at a Graduate Club speech in downtown New Haven Tuesday.

The speaker was Elaine Zimmerman, executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Children. She spoke at the monthly breakfast speaker series run by the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund.

Kids in Connecticut are in trouble, Zimmerman warned. “We are ignoring them.”

For instance, she spoke of how obesity has nearly tripled for kids between 6 and 11 years old. Kids who’re obese at that age disproportionately remain obese as adult. Treating the effects of obesity — Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, asthma, strokes, hypertension — costs Connecticut $665 million a year just for Medicare and Medicaid, and $856 million overall, according to Zimmerman.

“What we do with our little munckins is what we do with our society” and our economy, she warned.

She spoke of how only 2 percent of the children at Milner Elementary School in Hartford pass grade-level reading tests, another predictor of how children will fare as adults. “Hartford has more pregnant teenagers than female graduates,” she said.

Meanwhile, Zimmerman said, only 2.8 percent of state spending on children and families goes toward prevention rather than the costlier problems that develop without prevention.

Kids are also afraid, she said. She spoke of essays her agency has asked kids statewide since Sept. 11, 2001, to write every year about terrorism and homeland secruity. “They don’t know how they’re being protected. Increasingly they don’t trust adults,” she reported. They also conflate Hurricane Katrina with 9-11: They see a government unable to protect them.

It wasn’t all gloom and doom at the Grad Club. Zimmerman described a generation of “compassion” and “pragmatism” dedicated to helping people like the victims of Katrina and “celebratory,” not just “tolerant,” of diversity.

She also expreessed hope in a new state law ordering Connecticut to dedicate 10 percent of its spending on childdren and families to prevention by the year 2020.

And she reported on the quantifiable success of pre-school programs preparing kids to read and succeed in class.

At the meeting Zimmerman distributed an early childhood “action agenda” for Connecticut prepared by a “cabinet” of concerned groups. It lists ten priorities for how the state can help make kids “Ready by 5 & Fine by 9.” The list includes boosting pre-school and the HUSKY health-care program for low-income families. Click here to read the full list.

Comments

posted by: Ned on September 19, 2006 12:55pm

What exactly is the point of having children write essays “about terrorism and ‘homeland’ secruity[sic]”? other than to make them anxious. There couldn’t be any connection between the alarming essay assingments and feelings of insecurity? If you want the kiddies to know what goverment is about, have them read Machiavelli or Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda principles.
“Meanwhile, Zimmerman said, only 2.8 percent of state spending on children and families goes toward prevention.” Maybe more money should go toward preventing these kids from being born, free sterilization and birth control could be provided to anyone in Hartford, or subsidies to those who remain child free.

posted by: ananda on September 19, 2006 4:24pm

These kids sound more on point than most adults i know, and they’re right to conflate 9/11 with katrina - not only will the government not protect them, instead of helping them recover it’ll exploit their wounds for the sake of cheap photo-ops and momentum for popular support of its ulterior motives.

Here’s one way the US gov’t aims to relieve Katrina victims. Maybe the next generation will overthrow this tradition of exploitation and paternalism of wealth.

New Haven Independent

New Haven Independent Login Form