A community health assessment in Ottawa County will focus on obesity among children, according to Nancy Osborn, the county health commissioner, who last week announced the health department has received a $40,000 grant to fund the assessment.

The Ohio Department of Health has awarded the grant for the project, which will include a sampling of several hundred adults and students living in the county.

The survey sampling will include questions about health, lifestyles, and access to health care, Osborn said.

“A critical element of the assessment is the focus on childhood obesity,” she said. “This is a very real problem in every community, including here.”

Health department staff will collect data in cooperation with the University of Toledo, Hospital Council of Northwest Ohio, and school districts in the county.

Census records and other vital statistics will also be incorporated into the assessment, Osborn said, adding the information will be used to prepare a strategic plan to prioritize health-related issues in the county and then establish programs to address them.

The last community health assessment was completed in 2006.

Earlier this year, the Ohio Department of Health released the 2004-10 Third Grade Body Mass Index Report, a comprehensive account of the prevalence of overweight and obese students in each county.

The report includes data collected during the 2004-10 school years as part of the department’s state and county-level BMI surveillance efforts.

About 15,000 children from more than 350 public elementary schools were measured.

Ohio was named the 13th most obese state in the country, according to the eighth annual “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011,” a report from the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Ohio's adult obesity rate is 29.6 percent.

Adult obesity rates increased in 16 states in the past year and did not decline in any state.  Twelve states now have obesity rates over 30 percent. Four years ago, only one state was above 30 percent. Obesity rates exceed 25 percent in more than two-thirds of states (38 states)

This year, for the first time, the report examined how the obesity epidemic has grown over the past two decades:

Over the past 15 years, seven states have doubled their rate of obesity. Another 10 states nearly doubled their obesity rate, with increased of at least 90 percent, and 22 more states saw obesity rates increase by at least 80 percent.

Fifteen years ago, Ohio had an obesity rate of 16.1 percent and was ranked 15th most obese state in the nation. The obesity rate in Ohio increased more than 80 percent over the last 15 years.

Since 1995, obesity rates have grown the fastest in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee, and have grown the slowest in Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Connecticut.

Ten years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 24 percent, and now 43 states have higher obesity rates than the state that was the highest in 2000.

The report was released in July.

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