UCSF Helps Local Kids Run Toward a Healthy Future
A group of UCSF pediatric residents is giving local children a running start toward a healthier future.
In an effort to combat childhood obesity and promote healthy habits, pediatric residents from the UCSF Primary Care Pathway, which emphasizes practice-based training and collaboration with community organizations, are leading an after-school running program for 60 students at John Muir Elementary School.
Both the school and UCSF’s Mount Zion campus, where the residents are based, are located in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, where the prevalence of obesity is close to 30 percent.
“We decided to focus on childhood obesity prevention because it’s very hard to have an impact on a child who is already overweight and who doesn’t have access to proper nutrition and fitness,” said Emily Roth, MD, program director of the Primary Care Pathway and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics.
In 2006, Roth and her then residents were so frustrated by the lack of fitness opportunities for Western Addition kids that they approached staff at the Western Addition Beacon Center, an after-school program provider, to discuss possible solutions.
With funding from the Mount Zion Health Fund, and in collaboration with the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, the John Muir running group became a reality. This year, there are five UCSF residents and one premed student volunteering in the effort.
The children spend two afternoons per week running laps around the school playground, often accompanied by a UCSF doctor, a teacher or another volunteer. The runners keep detailed logs of their mileage and receive incentive awards upon reaching various distance goals.
“The program gives the kids role models, and it also tells the community that we care about them, their health and their schools,” Roth said. “We’ve probably learned as much from the kids as they’ve learned from us.”
The running group’s influence has extended beyond the Western Addition: It served as one of the pilot groups within Just Run San Francisco, an offshoot of the San Francisco Marathon’s youth running program.
Over the past year, Just Run groups have started up at nine other city schools, reaching about 2,000 students per year, according to program director Patricia Norman.
In addition to trying to instill healthy habits during the semiweekly runs, the UCSF residents also host two nutrition seminars per year to try to get the children’s parents more involved.
“By educating the whole family at once, there’s this unity, this sense that we’re in this together,” Norman said.
The runners, who have named their group the “Beacon Burners,” also participate in two short-distance races every year – a chance for them to see other parts of the city.
“These kids have quite a few hardships,” Norman said. “Just taking them out of their neighborhood allows them to see there’s a whole world out there of healthy living and healthy behaviors.”
Roth said she hopes to continue the John Muir running program long into the future.
“This has been a really great model for how universities and communities and nonprofits can come together to address critical problems like obesity,” she said. “What we’re also doing is training future pediatricians to think about both the individual and the surrounding community as they’re trying to improve child health.”