National Let's Move! in Indian Country Launches in Wisconsin
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Follow UWSMPH on FacebookMadison, Wisconsin - The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin will debut First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! in Indian Country campaign at 10am Wednesday, May 25, at the Woodland Bowl amphitheater in Keshena, Wisconsin.
More than a year in the making, Let's Move! in Indian Country aims to reduce obesity among Indian children within a generation. While the first lady herself will not attend, dignitaries expected at the event include:
- Larry Echo Hawk, assistant secretary of Indian affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior
- Robin Schepper, executive director of Let's Move Initiative, Office of the First Lady
- Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Dr. Alex Adams, of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, will participate Wednesday because she and her research team have been partnering with the Menominee Nation for 10 years on childhood obesity prevention initiatives.
"We are delighted that the Menominee Nation has been chosen for this honor," says Adams, director of the UW Collaborative Center for Health Equity (CCHE). "This event will help highlight all of the great work being done at Menominee and other tribes in Wisconsin to combat the childhood obesity epidemic and to make healthier tribal communities."
Adams and her staff will run an indigenous games activity station for third- and fourth-grade children at Wednesday's event.
Currently, they devote most of their time to Healthy Children, Strong Families (HCSF), a year-long innovative program aimed at helping tribal families with young children create healthier lifestyles. Healthy Children, Strong Families was developed by Adams's team in collaboration with four Wisconsin tribes, including Menominee.
They also help coordinate the Menominee tribal community advisory board which works on healthy community initiatives such as community gardens.
Partnerships are key, says Adams, who is studying the effectiveness of the Healthy Children, Strong Families program using community-based participatory research. Adams has worked in partnership with Menominee, other Wisconsin tribes and the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, guided by the same goal as Let's Move! in Indian Country's: promoting healthy lifestyles filled with physical activity and healthy nutrition.
"In this kind of research, the community must be engaged in setting goals and fully participating in the research," she says. "It's a central principle of what we do at the Collaborative Center for Health Equity at the UW, in conjunction with our key community partners such as Menominee."
The Collaborative Center for Health Equity connects partners from Wisconsin's rural, urban, tribal and other diverse communities with UW faculty, research staff and trainees so that together they can use or develop educational, training and research resources aimed at improving the health and wellness of Wisconsin's underserved, minority and immigrant populations.
The Collaborative Center for Health Equity was created in 2009 with a $7.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health.
Date Published: 05/24/2011
