Kids health: There's an app for that
theGRIO REPORT - If kids want to stay at the head of the class and keep health and fitness a top priority, several apps have made it possible...
Dr. Marilyn McPherson Corder is a pediatrician in Washington, D.C. Last summer, Dr. Corder and her daughter Adrienne Corder, who is a fitness specialist, ran a six-week boot camp designed to teach children about healthy eating and exercise options. The average weight loss was 16 pounds among the 30 camp participants.
Dr. Corder says summer months are a great time to change children’s eating and fitness behaviors.
“Kids have a whole different mind-set if we reach them during the summer, and begin to turn the tide and help them embrace lifestyle changes — it takes a village, but it certainly takes the family unit,” Corder says.
Clicking for Your Child’s Health: HealthyChildren.org
Engaging children in health and fitness may be a struggle for some moms and dads, but there are also tools crafted for these hesitant parents.
HealthyChildren.org, the official American Academy of Pediatrics website for parents, launched the Healthy Children app for Apple and Android devices in August 2012. The organization’s Healthy Children former print magazine is now offered as an e-zine that can be accessed through the new app.
“So many people have smart phones and tablets, it’s great to access this information this way; Portable information is much better than having pages and pages of content on a website,” says Dr. Jennifer Shu, an Atlanta pediatrician in private practice, and medical editor of HealthyChildren.org.
Shu says the app provides parents and teens access to information such as alcohol, drugs, fitness, nutrition and safety.
“These are good ways to start conversations,” Shu says.
Parents can search age-by-age health information for their children, check immunization schedules, access first-aid how-to information and other resources. The app also includes a Find-A-Pediatrician tool and the Ask the Pediatrician advice column.
The Eat-and-Move-o-Matic is an educational tool that allows children to see how many calories are in their favorite foods and shows the amount of time it will take to work those calories off.
So plug in a bean and cheese burrito and Eat-and-Move-O-Matic will show that there are 379 calories in the burrito, and that it will take one hour and 48 minutes of medium-impact exercise to work off those calories.
Apps are great way to engage kids about their health because, Dr. Corder says, “they are fun, and they allow the kids to monitor and pace themselves, so there is an accountability factor.”
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