Michelle Loubon

Olympic medal­list Keshorn Wal­cott is ex­pect­ed to lead the "elite ath­letes"?cam­paign to sen­si­tise chil­dren about the dan­gers of child­hood obe­si­ty which could lead to dis­eases like di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure. It is ex­pect­ed to get un­der­way in Feb­ru­ary 2013. World Di­a­betes Day will be cel­e­brat­ed on Wednes­day.

The project is be­ing done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Johns Hop­kins School of Med­i­cine, Bal­ti­more, USA, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee. Last Tues­day, Johns Hop­kins pro­fes­sor, Paul Laden­son (En­docrinol­o­gy) and Prof Emer­i­tus Pe­di­atric En­docrinol­o­gy David Gold­stein were in town for the Acad­e­my of Di­a­betes Clin­i­cians of T&T (Busi­ness Meet­ing and Lec­ture)?at Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

In­ter­viewed on Thurs­day, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (T&TOC) Lar­ry Ro­many said, "Keshorn is one of the ath­letes we would be us­ing. He would be the most promi­nent fig­ure. We are proud to be as­so­ci­at­ed with Johns Hop­kins. As part of the in­ter­ven­tion, we are de­vel­op­ing an elite ath­letes cam­paign us­ing oth­er ath­letes who were suc­cess­ful at the re­cent Olympic games in Lon­don.

"We want to put for­ward the mes­sage to help sen­si­tise young peo­ple and par­ents about what needs to be done to pre­vent di­a­betes and obe­si­ty. All the ath­letes are pret­ty much on board in sen­si­tis­ing them about adopt­ing healthy lifestyles."

Ro­many said Johns Hop­kins had as­sist­ed in de­vel­op­ing pro­to­cols to eval­u­ate these dis­eases. "We went to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. We want to as­sess what would hap­pen to chil­dren ex­posed to high lev­els of obe­si­ty. We are look­ing at da­ta col­lec­tion. Im­por­tant da­ta would help de­vel­op the sport­ing land­scape from the cra­dle to the womb. We felt there was the need for a time­ly in­ter­ven­tion to al­le­vi­ate child­hood di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure and even low self-es­teem."?

The work has be­gun in the South West­ern penin­su­la. Ro­many said they were look­ing at eight school dis­tricts. "We ex­pect ad­di­tion­al stud­ies would come from it. Johns Hop­kins would be pro­vid­ing the eval­u­a­tion of da­ta."

Laden­son com­ments

Asked about Johns Hop­kins con­tri­bu­tion, Laden­son said it would eval­u­ate the da­ta based on their wide knowl­edge and ad­vise the T&TOC. "Whether it be the need for more phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and par­tic­i­pat­ing in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that could lead to health­i­er lifestyle changes.

We have con­sid­er­a­tions about height, weight and in­creased phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. They have a broad view of the mis­sion but they want to im­prove the health of chil­dren with elite ath­letes pro­grammes. We want to send more chil­dren to the Olympics."