Dear Virginia pediatric provider:
The need for enhancing the competence of pediatric providers to help slow down the epidemic of child obesity, or even reverse it, is not a topic that needs debate. We need to know how to help families without saying the wrong things and we need to know that our efforts are not causing more harm. We are now at a point with childhood obesity similar to where we were 20 years ago with addressing smoking. This public health threat will require collective action involving community-based activism, wide range policy changes, and proactive efforts on the part of all providers who care for children.
The Virginia Chapter of the AAP has formulated this toolkit to begin helping you in your quest against childhood obesity. The kit is meant to be user friendly and easy to implement in any practice. The content is adapted from a combination of tools already put in place by experts from our participating pediatric providers and from our pediatric colleagues from Arizona to Maine. This comprehensive kit includes everything from a template for a standard medical evaluation to a listing of useful CPT and ICD-9 codes for billing.
Our toolkit is a work in progress and is just the beginning of our efforts in battling the obesity epidemic. We are currently working on a Virginia obesity website and we hope to soon have trainers coming to your cities and towns to help guide you and perfect your skills as an anti-obesity warrior. We are committed to helping you develop the expertise needed to confidently and effectively treat this vulnerable population thus, bringing the fight against childhood obesity to the frontlines of primary care. If you have any comments or suggestions or would just like to share your expertise, please let us know. We would love to hear from you.
