Based on decades of scientific research and clinical experience, Safe and Effective Exercise for Overweight Youth provides a scientifically supported and clinically relevant source of information that clinical health care providers, educators, public health, and fitness professionals may use to promote physical activity in overweight and obese youth of all ages, including those with significant obesity and chronic health conditions, such as hypertension, asthma, and type 2 diabetes. It presents a best practices model for implementing clinical- and recreational-based physical activity interventions.
The first five chapters offer an overview of the existing scientific literature supporting individualized, tailored exercise prescriptions for overweight and obese children with and without comorbidities. They also contain exercise instructions, illustrations, and sample lesson plans to improve cardiopulmonary endurance, muscular strength, power and endurance, and muscular flexibility. This information provides the basis for the recommendations provided in the subsequent chapters, which include specific guidelines for prescribing exercise to overweight children along with verbal cues or "talking points," clinical reminders, and handouts to assist health care providers.
The text provides a 40-week exercise curriculum with lesson plans, discusses the importance of regular medical and self-monitoring, and offers easy tools and techniques for health care providers to track a child's progress. Chapters also supply detailed clinical and field protocols to aid in measuring health and fitness outcomes, describe realistic expectations, and present the U.S. recommendations for promoting physical activity and fitness in youth. The final chapter summarizes current studies to support future research on physical activity for the prevention and management of pediatric obesity.
Melinda S. Sothern, PhD, CEP is a licensed clinical exercise physiologist and Professor (tenure) in the LSUHSC School of Public Health (Behavioral and Community Health Sciences Program) and School of Medicine (Department of Pediatrics) in New Orleans, LA, and the Prevention of Childhood Obesity Laboratory at the LSU Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. She is the recipient of the LSUHSC School of Public Health Jim Finks Endowed Chair in Health Promotion.
Dr. Sothern's research is widely published in a multitude of peer-reviewed scientific journals and in three scientific textbooks,
Safe and Effective Exercise for Overweight Youth (CRC Press, 2014),
The Handbook of Pediatric Obesity: Clinical Management (Taylor and Francis, 2006), and
The Handbook of Pediatric Obesity: Etiology, Pathophysiology and Prevention (Taylor and Francis, 2005). She also senior-authored a popular press book for parents of overweight children entitled
Trim Kids (Harper Collins, 2001). The
Trim Kids program is recognized by the National Cancer Institute as a Research Tested Intervention Program and is acknowledged by the U. S. Surgeon General for its community dissemination in YMCA centers in Louisiana.
Dr. Sothern was the 2009 recipient of the Obesity Society's Oded Bar Or Award for Excellence in Pediatric Obesity Research, the 2008 recipient of the Cecil J. Picard Award for Excellence in Education to Prevent Childhood Obesity in Louisiana, and was selected as one of the Top Ten Female Achievers by
New Orleans magazine. She recently received the 2014 Allen Copping Award for Excellence in Teaching at the LSUHSC School of Public Health, was honored with a proclamation by the New Orleans City Council as the outstanding alumna of the Human Performance and Health Promotion Program, and received Dr. Vane Wilson Award in recognition of excellent work and service in the field of human performance and health promotion in May
