Pfizer Health Solutions - Balance It Out: Arkansas
Situation
- The increasing prevalence of overweight children and adolescents in the United States threatens the well-being of a vast segment of this population. Medicaid families with preexisting chronic disease are shown to have higher rates of obesity and therefore perpetuate the cycle of disease.
- For children, schools and families can set healthy examples, encourage better self care at an early age and provide incentives for healthier eating and exercise habits.
- Pfizer Health Solutions (PHS) believes that the healthcare system can be better equipped to maximize people’s health by focusing on education, preventing disease and offering better access to resources.
Solution
Balance it Out: ArkansasSM (BIOA) is designed to help children and their families better understand their health by addressing diet, sedentary lifestyle and risk factors for developing chronic diseases. BIOA is being implemented in three diverse Arkansas school districts.
BIOA teaches participants to embrace healthier eating and behaviors and provides school and community-based screenings, behavior assessments, and one-on-one coaching for students and families to help change behavior and improve health. Unlike other school-based health education programs, community-based care teams of lay educators and school nurses help students better understand their health.
BIOA provides at-risk families with nutritional counseling and classes on healthy cooking, eating and food shopping. Chronically ill Medicaid beneficiaries with children in the three school districts receive health coaching to improve their families’ overall health.
Better Health Lower Costs
The project is in the early stages of development but has already been successful in coordinating resources and utilizing the community and school districts to identify and enroll families at the highest risk.- Balance It Out: Arkansas is expected to show improvements in health outcomes and reduce overall medical costs for participants.
