Battling Obesity In Butler County

By Kelly Wagner

Miami University journalism student

The obesity epidemic in America is rising. About 37 percent of adult Americans are obese and 17 percent of American teenagers are also considered to be obese.

Obesity can be defined as having a BMI (body mass index) of more than 30. BMI measures one's height to weight ratio. Someone who falls into the obese category often has too much body fat; however, BMI is an imperfect measure and individuals with a lot of muscle can also have high BMIs.

Medical professionals are concerned about an individual's BMI because obesity can bring with it a host of health problems.

Obesity In Butler County

Obesity has been a concern of the American medical establishment for years and a number of efforts have been launched to educate individuals about obesity.

Healthy People 2020, a program for national health promotion and disease prevention created by the U.S. government, has a goal to reduce the percentage of obese people to 30.1 percent by 2020.

Ohio’s Butler County, with a population of about 368,000, is one of the many places in the United States that has an obesity problem.

Though the percentage of obese adults in the county is already below the Healthy People 2020 mark, 28.9 percent of adults in Butler County are obese.

"It is due to lifestyle choices," says David Sens, a nurse at Bethesda Butler Hospital. "I think it is (the obesity epidemic) right there with the rest of the country."

Oxford Addresses Epidemic

Amy Macechko, the project coordinator for the Coalition for a Healthy Community in the Oxford area, says obesity has become a problem because people are much more sedentary these days and it's something her organization is working to address.

The Coalition for a Healthy Community began in 1997 and focused on drug and alcohol prevention until 2010 when the coalition took a second look at their program.

"In 2010, we looked at the name of our mission and thought we needed to address a healthy community that's more than drugs and alcohol. The hospital needed to complete a community wide health need assessment and looked at this coalition," says Macechko.

McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital and the Coalition for a Healthy Community partnered together to complete this assessment and work with the results.

After the results came in, they reconstructed the coalition and realized they needed to form the Obesity Prevention Workgroup. It was formed in 2014 and its goals are to engage the whole community in order to promote a healthy lifestyle.

The Two Main Focuses

The Obesity Prevention Workgroup focuses mainly on healthy eating and active living.

The program receives funding from Interact for Health, who gives grants to programs and organizations who promote a healthy lifestyle.

"We are very fortunate to receive funding from Interact for Health, we received a thriving community grant. The goal of the grant is to involve the community and to make sure everyone realizes they play a part in that, and try to engage the residents in more physical activity," says Macechko.

The program offers free yoga, skating, and several other physical activities. A recent activity they put together was a walking challenge where everyone in the community was encouraged to track their steps for a week to meet a 14 million step goal.

"We crushed that goal," says Macechko.

The Obesity Prevention Workgroup is working to expand Oxford trail systems, have more accessible walking routes to and from places, and anything that can get the community to be more accessible for walking, biking, and non-motorized transportation. One of the coalition's goals is to create safer routes for children to walk to school as well as creating new trails that are easy to walk in.

Other Oxford Options

Over the past several years, an entire industry has grown up around healthy living. Social media are full of accounts pushing a healthy lifestyle while restaurants and health food stores have opened around the country claiming to promote healthy living and eating.

One such store in Oxford is Peak Health and Nutrition. Visitors to the store will find shelves full of vitamins and supplements that claim to help improve an individual's health.

One store employee thinks the products they offer can help with the obesity problem.

"We have all of the nutritional stuff, everything is all natural. It is to make people healthier and with all the protein if people want to lose weight. It does have the greens that people need to eat everyday."

Oxford also offers a free health clinic, which typically serves the rural population. Many of the clinics visitors do not have health insurance.

"There are patients who come to the clinic who would be classified as overweight or even obese," says board of director member Alexandria Still. "A lot of this stems from lack of education about healthy eating and exercising."

Miami University Steps In

Miami University, whose main campus is in Oxford, is also working to address the obesity epidemic in the community.

Kelsie Newton, a junior studying dietetics and kinesiology at Miami University, says her majors "provide classes that keep us up to date with current health disparities all over the world."

Newton is also a student intern for Miami's Benefits and Wellness Department.

"My internship involves promoting healthy lifestyles on Miami's campus and in the Oxford community," Newton says. "We plan events and programs that have a positive connotation and help others want to be healthy, rather than address issues that do not have such a positive context. By engaging in the healthy behaviors that we promote, like exercise, healthy eating, and being tobacco-free, individuals are less likely to be in contact with things like the obesity epidemic."

The university has walking challenges for the community such as the Walk 4 Seven Challenge and the HawkWalk, and offers fitness, healthy-living, and cooking classes to the public.

You can calculate your BMI here. For more information about the Oxford Health Coalition for a Healthy Community you can visit its website.

Photo: Oxford, Ohio, is a town that is a part of Butler County and have an obesity epidemic. -- Photo by Kelly Wagner