{"id":23,"date":"2025-10-20T22:25:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T22:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/?p=23"},"modified":"2025-11-13T22:35:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:35:54","slug":"obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/obesity\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing childhood obesity in rural areas"},"content":{"rendered":"
Achieving Excellence<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

Rural children are about 25% more likely than urban peers to experience obesity, a trend driven by limited access to nutritious food, higher poverty rates, lack of health services and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dipti Dev leads a team aiming to narrow this gap through the Healthy Children, Healthy Communities project, which helps rural child care programs foster healthy eating habits among 3- to 5-year-olds by using a strategy called responsive feeding. The approach uses coaching and feedback to encourage children to self-regulate their food intake and make conscious eating decisions based on hunger and fullness cues. The Nebraska team is training child care providers using the online EAT (Ecological Approach To) for Prevention program, which Dev developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a first-of-its-kind study, the team is testing the EAT model in 100 rural, home-based child care settings, which are vital to meeting the needs of families who need affordable, flexible scheduling or lack access to center-based child care. The team\u2019s tailored, innovative recruitment strategies have successfully engaged providers to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preliminary research indicates that EAT for Prevention promotes healthy food consumption, reduces mealtime stress and engages children while they eat. Dev\u2019s team is assessing how it holds up in rural home-based child care settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I envision Nebraska leading the way in this area, advancing best practices in responsive feeding to create healthier futures for rural children across the nation.<\/p>\nDipti Dev<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A major goal is to provide tailored coaching to providers based on their mealtime routines and the unique challenges of children\u2019s eating behaviors.        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOftentimes mealtime is viewed as a break, but we\u2019re guiding providers to take advantage of this unique opportunity to engage children. This makes them more inclined to try new foods and develop a positive relationship with healthy eating,\u201d said Dev, Betti and Richard Robinson Associate Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies and Nebraska Extension specialist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers are collecting data on what and how much children eat while in child care. They are also using a Veggie Meter device to assess biomarkers of fruit and vegetable intake, and assessing children\u2019s self-regulation skills and BMI z-scores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dev expects the study to serve as a national blueprint for how rural child care providers can address childhood obesity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI envision Nebraska leading the way in this area, advancing best practices in responsive feeding to create healthier futures for rural children across the nation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health supports the work. The team includes Husker researchers Lisa Franzen-Castle, Lisa Knoche and Lorey Wheeler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Additional Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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News release<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Nebraska Public Media<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Child Care<\/a>, <\/span>Dipti Dev<\/a>, <\/span>Equal Access<\/a>, <\/span>Health<\/a>, <\/span>Leadership<\/a>, <\/span>Lisa Franzen-Castle<\/a>, <\/span>Lisa Knoche<\/a>, <\/span>Lory Wheeler<\/a>, <\/span>National Institutes of Health<\/a>, <\/span>Nebraska Extension<\/a>, <\/span>Nebraska Impact<\/a>, <\/span>Nutrition<\/a>, <\/span>Obesity Prevention<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dipti Dev leads a team aiming to narrow the nutrition gap for rural children through a project that provides tailored coaching to help rural child care programs foster healthy eating habits among 3- to 5-year-olds. Researchers believe the program has the potential to become a national model for addressing childhood obesity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[156,155,154,23,181,158,159,160,32,157,177,27,28],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achieving-excellence","tag-child-care","tag-dipti-dev","tag-equal-access","tag-health","tag-leadership","tag-lisa-franzen-castle","tag-lisa-knoche","tag-lory-wheeler","tag-national-institutes-of-health","tag-nebraska-extension","tag-nebraska-impact","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity-prevention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}