Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Healthy Children, Healthy Communities

An intervention to prevent childhood obesity has blossomed into a communitywide effort led by a local hospital. Providence St. Patrick Hospital helped launch CATCH—Coordinated Approach to Child Health—in Missoula, Mont. Based on the CDC’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model, CATCH is an evidence-based program to encourage physical activity and healthy food choices by elementary schoolchildren. After a successful two-year pilot, St. Patrick Hospital, the Missoula City-County Health Department and the school district expanded the initiative. The hospital funded a part-time registered dietitian and community health specialist to provide on-site training for all school staff and to help add salad bars and new fruit to the school lunch program. The community health specialist also works with local organizations and offers CATCH support to other hospitals. Missoula’s Parks and Recreation department, Food Bank and YMCA also have embraced CATCH in their programs and activities. Pilot results showed that students’ knowledge about how to eat a healthy diet increased by more than 30%, and the number of children reporting they ate fruit daily increased by nearly 40%. Providence St. Patrick Hospital now has guided 10 school districts in implementing CATCH. Identifying dedicated hospital champions to coordinate and spread the program has been critical to success as well as partnering with a broad range of community stakeholders for support.

For more information, contact Lisa Tims, CATCH program coordinator, St. Patrick Hospital, at lisa.tims@providence.org. Read the complete case study on HPOE.org.