Shape Up Somerville Is Working, Says City

According to Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone's office, Shape Up Somerville, a citywide initiative to improve the health of residents, is showing some success.

In an announcement sent Tuesday, the mayor's office said the city's efforts to combat childhood obesity have shown some modest results.

It said that after two years of the Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart Play Hard initiative, fewer Somerville kids "targeted by the intervention were obese or overweight compared to children in two similar control communities."

The announcement also said that 335 Somerville children who were part of the study—first, second and third graders—saw their body mass index "z-score" decrease by 0.06, "a modest reduction in weight gain compared to the 693 children in the communities that did not receive the intervention."

These results, the announcement said, were published in a study by Christina D. Economos of the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition.

In a statement, Economos said, "These results are more meaningful than the modest reduction in weight gain suggests" because early elementary school kids gain weight as they grow, but unhealthy weight gain leads to obesity.

The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine, according to the announcement.

Somerville Patch has contacted the mayor's office to learn more about the study, including where to find it and which were the two "control communities." We'll pass along that information when we get it.