Feds Want Fat Kids to Walk

The federal government is spending more than $1.5 million to research how “bicycle trains” and “walking school buses” can help obese children lose weight.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is currently funding two studies to a researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital, both of which aim to get more children to stop riding the school bus.

Dr. Jason Mendoza has received $405,835 for a pilot study on “bicycle trains,” or a group of kids who bike to school with adult chaperons. The project is billed as a “low-cost, practical program to reduce risk of obesity for at-risk children.”

The study, which just got underway in two Seattle elementary schools, is focusing on “low-income and ethnic minority children,” who are at the highest risk for obesity, according to the grant.

The project first received funding in February 2013, and will continue until next January. Mendoza, a pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is following 80 fourth and fifth graders for the “pilot cluster.”

The study’s premise is that there is a correlation between the decline in walking to school and the increase in childhood obesity in recent decades.

“U.S. children’s active commuting to school (ACS; walking or cycling to school), previously common (48% in 1969) is now uncommon (13% in 2009),” the grant said. “This decline coincided with the obesity epidemic, which disproportionately affects low-income and ethnic minority children.”

The grant said increasing children’s physical activity is “necessary,” and bicycle trains have not yet been tested as a way to achieve that goal.

“The bicycle train is an innovative program in which children cycle to and from school led by adults,” the grant said. “Bicycle trains provide another option for [active commuting to school] ACS, especially for children who live too far to walk to school.”

The project will look at “barriers/facilitators” to children’s participation in the program, and use GPS data to “identify and measure children’s physical activity intensity and duration while cycling.” Heart rate data will also be observed.

Mendoza said bicycle trains could help fight obesity and climate change.

“The bicycle train program could be widely used to help students get safely to and from school and provide them with a great opportunity for daily physical activity,” he told the Washington Free Beacon in an email. “It may also help cut down on school traffic and vehicle pollution.”