National Cancer Institute’s website highlights work by Michele Polacsek and the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative

Michele Polacsek, Ph.D., M.H.S., associate professor in the School of Community and Population Health, served as lead author on a publication that is highlighted on the National Cancer Institute’s Research-Tested Interventions (RTIPs) program website.  

The publication, “The Pediatric Obesity Clinical Decision Support Chart,” is part of a tool-kit called Keep ME Healthy, which was developed by the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative (MYOC) to provide practical support and guidance to health care practices, organizations, and individuals across the state in order to improve clinical practice and to improve quality of life for youth and families, particularly the uninsured and underserved.

The clinical decision support chart provides clinicians with practical, point-of-care guidance on childhood obesity and tools for clinicians to use with children and parents during office visits. It is available in four languages.

MYOC has reached an agreement with the National American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to market and promote the chart internationally, which indicates both a substantial impact in the rural state and important gains in knowledge of effective strategies for delivering primary care prevention.

Additionally, Polacsek is the featured RTIPs partner of the month on the NCI’s Research to Reality website, which contains an interview with Polacsek about the MYOC program.

MYOC is a joint initiative of the Maine–Harvard Prevention Research Center and the Maine Chapter of the AAP aimed at improving care and outcomes for overweight and obese youth. MYOC applies community based research principles in developing materials for parents and clinical care providers around reducing television viewing and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables.


 

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