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June 29 – July 2, 2015

San Diego, California

Conference Theme & Goals

 

Welcome!

On behalf of the conference hosts, welcome to the 2015 Childhood Obesity Conference to be held June 29 – July 2, at the Town and Country Resort and Conference Center in San Diego, California! Conference hosts include The California Department of Public Health, California Department of Education, Nutrition Policy Institute UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, The California Endowment, and Kaiser Permanente.

The 8th biennial Childhood Obesity Conference is the nation’s largest, most influential collaboration of professionals dedicated to combating pediatric obesity/overweight. Nearly 2,000 attendees from across the country are expected to attend in 2015.

Join us as we continue to share and discuss emerging research, best practices, community-based efforts and effective policy strategies that promote and sustain healthy eating and physical activity practices for children, adolescents and their families!

Conference Theme

This year’s conference theme is, “Collective Impact: Developing a Shared Vision to Achieve Greater Success”. This theme invites conference participants to discover the various partnerships and cross-sector collaborations that are essential to accelerating systemic change as well as exploring the possibilities of forming uncommon and thought-provoking alliances to tackle the childhood obesity epidemic. In addition, the conference will focus on how you can strengthen existing partnerships in order to maximize results, leverage resources and develop a shared vision to achieve social norm change in your community and the communities you serve.

A Focus on Collective Impact:
The conference will highlight how collective impact principles coupled with evidence and practice based strategies can be used to effectively and efficiently combat the socio-ecological factors that contribute to overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. Strategies and principles that are focused on reaching children and adolescents who suffer disproportionality from high obesity/overweight will be elevated.

Collective Impact is:

  • People coming together, in a structured way, to achieve social change.
  • People coming together to collectively define a problem and creating a shared vision to solve it.
  • Tracking progress jointly, to allow for continuous improvement.
  • Coordinating collective efforts to maximize the end result.
  • Building trust and relationships among all parties.
  • Having a team dedicated to organizing the work of the group.

*Collective Impact principles credited to FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions.

Conference Goals

  1. Bring together diverse stakeholders to share knowledge, leverage partnerships and identify collective solutions to increase access to healthy foods and increase opportunities for children and their families to be physically active.
  2. Share and discuss emerging research, best practices, community-based efforts and effective policy strategies that promote and sustain healthy eating and physical activity practices.
  3. Elevate evidence and practice-based strategies that focus on reducing inequities in high-risk, low income communities.
  4. Using a collective impact approach, discover new cross-sector collaborations and strengthen existing partnerships to effectively and efficiently combat the socio-ecological factors that contribute to overweight/obesity in children and adolescents.
  5. Recognize opportunities to leverage State and Federal legislation to further policies and programs that aim to reduce overweight/obesity in children and adolescents (e.g. Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, Farm Bill, Affordable Care Act, Covered California etc.).

Conference Rationale

Obesity in children and adolescents carries serious health and social consequences and has continued to be a concerning and costly epidemic for families, communities, schools, and health care providers. During the past 30 years, obesity rates doubled for adults and preschool children, while tripling among school-age children and adolescents. In recent years however, progress has been evident. The national childhood obesity rate has leveled off and California is among the select few states that have reported modest decreases in childhood obesity rates. Despite signs of progress, racial and ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic disparities in obesity rates still persist in California and across the country – our work is far from done.

Conference History

In response to the obesity epidemic, beginning in 2001 and every other year since, the Childhood Obesity Conference has become an important way for health care professionals, policy makers, educators, and community advocates to share strategies, develop partnerships, and coordinate their efforts to address the multivariate factors that influence obesity/overweight prevalence in children and adolescents. The conference is now the largest gathering of professionals on the topic of pediatric obesity/overweight in the nation.

Without the support of the conference hosts, sponsors, exhibitors, presenters, planning committee members and attendees over the last decade and a half, this conference would not be possible. The conference hopes to continue to serve as the premier meeting ground for those working to reduce the nation’s childhood obesity rates.

To access past conference materials and information, please use the following links:

2013 Childhood Obesity Conference website
2011 Childhood Obesity Conference website
2009 Childhood Obesity Conference website
(2007, 2005, 2003, 2001 websites unavailable)

Conference Tracks

Please select a track from the list below or choose SHOW ALL TRACKS to see all tracks.

 

A SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR HOSTS

Health Travel Guide

ORGANIZING PARTNER

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