Background: Recess is an integral part of a comprehensive school physical activity program. Immediately prior to the pandemic, state legislation doubled the amount of required recess, creating an opportunity to better understand how policies and practices influence recess. Purpose: To describe changes to recess due to COVID-19 and extended recess…

This article discusses Fundreds in Arkansas, an interactive cooperative in Arkansas to promote and support Mel Chin's nationwide interdisciplinary artwork, Operation Paydirt (The Fundred Dollar Bill Project). The artwork involves communities and educational institutions across the country, healthcare professionals, engineers, urban planners, and…

Background: Epidemic increases in childhood obesity and associated health risks are resulting in efforts to implement school policies related to nutrition and physical activity (NPA). With multicomponent policy efforts, challenges exist in characterizing the extent of policy change across the breadth of NPA policies. Methods: Aggregated policy…

This study investigated a federal comprehensive community initiative, the Promise Neighborhood initiative, in order to understand higher education community engagement in an embedded context. Promise Neighborhood programs aim to create a place-based system of family and education services that can support youth from early childhood through college…

More than 67,000 preschoolers with disabilities across five states were examined for disproportionate special education eligibilities using risk ratios (RRs). Results indicated children classified as American Indian (RR = 2.25) and Black (RR = 1.64) were disproportionate in one state, whereas children classified as Asian, Hispanic, and White…

Background: School-based body mass index (BMI) measurement has attracted much attention across the nation from researchers, school officials, legislators, and the media as a potential approach to address obesity among youth. Methods: An expert panel, convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2005, reviewed and provided…

Parents of children in most elementary grades in Minnesota's Independent School District 191 receive an annual notice with potentially life-altering data for their children--and they are not state test scores, attendance rates, or grades. The notice contains the child's body mass index (BMI) score, which estimates whether the student has excess…

Background: To comprehensively address the childhood and adolescent obesity epidemic, Arkansas enacted Act 1220 of 2003. Among a series of community- and school-based interventions, the Act requires each public school student to have his/her body mass index (BMI) assessed and reported annually to parents. The process of implementing this policy on…

This article reports the findings of a statewide study evaluating the body weights of nearly all public school students in Arkansas. Researchers in Arkansas analyzed "body-mass index" data for more than 345,000 students at all grade levels in 93 percent of the state's public schools during the 2003-04 school year. Based on the data, the…

Reviews current literature on school enrollment-based health insurance programs underway or pending in the United States, focusing on initiatives in Florida, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Texas and discussing programs in several other states. The paper discusses problems with uninsuredness in the United States and examines innovations in child…

National surveys that have tracked weight and physical activity in the United States for more than 40 years have shown a continuing increase in the number of overweight children and adolescents. Overweight children and adolescents are showing an increase in diseases related to overweight: Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and…

The Kids First program at the University of Arkansas Medical School (UAMS) is an outgrowth of the Infant Health and Development Program, a randomized trial of an early intervention approach for premature, low birth weight children, which showed that intensive intervention had significant initial benefits in the cognitive development and behavior…