Innovation: Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) with OASIS
USA
AAI Domains:
Participation in society (voluntary activities)
Independent, healthy and secure living (lifelong learning, physical exercise)
Active ageing is a process that takes place over the life course but in many societies there is a growing issue with increasing levels of childhood obesity leading to a growing proportion of adults also being overweight and obese. Being overweight or obese as a child can have immediate consequences in terms of lower levels of mental well-being and in the more severe instances the early diagnosis of diseases such as type 2 diabetes at much earlier ages than has been seen in the past. Ensuring that children start their lives well is essential for them to maximise their potential to lead a healthy life over the whole of the life course.
In the USA nearly one in three children are overweight or obese and this poses a very real risk that the current generation of children will lead lives that are less healthy and perhaps even shorter than the current generation. There is clearly considerable scope for the development of social innovations to address this major public health challenge.
The National Institute of Health developed the Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) as an intervention to combat childhood obesity based on the best available scientific evidence. It advocated increasing levels of physical activity among children and education about healthy diets and living from an early age but the NIH found it difficult to implement the programme on a sufficiently large scale due to lack of funding and capacity. The socially innovative solution to this implementation difficulty was to use existing networks of voluntary organisations to assist with running the programme.
OASIS is a national organisation for older people aged 50 years and over that was established in 1982 to promote lifelong learning and active ageing and provided an ideal partner organisation to actually implement the CATCH programme. OASIS, with funding from charitable foundations and the NIH, was able to train and support older volunteers to go into schools to do an hour of fun physical exercise with children in the 5–11 age range. The older volunteers, typically relatively fit and active older people in their fifties and sixties, work with small groups of children in physical exercise activities and informal classes on healthy diets and lifestyles.
The CATCH programme now operates in 21 cities across 17 states with more than 25,000 children taking part supported by around 9,000 adults providing an estimated 75,000 hours of volunteering. The programme has been extensively researched and it is estimated that 65% of children and 81% of older adults who participate in the weekly programme are meeting the recommended levels for physical activity.
Both generations are eating more fruit and vegetables and benefit from inter-generational activities that are purposeful and enjoyable. CATCH is estimated to cost less than $900 for each Quality Adjusted Life Year when the threshold for medical treatment in the USA is typically $50,000 showing that it offers a tremendously good return on investment.
In relation to active ageing, CATCH encourages and relies on voluntary activities by older people in partnership with OASIS and participating schools in order to be implemented. There is an element of lifelong learning as older people are trained in how to run the programme and the health evidence that underpins it so that they can pass this information on how to lead a healthy lifestyle on to young children.
The key element of CATCH is the promotion of physical activity for both the young children and older people who deliver the programme. It is a highly promising social innovation that mobilises the potential of older people to deliver what is effectively a public health programme to young children in a fun and enjoyable way.