Prevention Matters

Health insurers aren't getting the return on investment that they want to see when they cover clinical treatments for pediatric obesity. That's one reason there is a shortage of programs in that area, according to Roberta Clarke, an associate professor in Boston University's Health Sector Management Program who just closed down one of the few pediatric obesity treatment clinics in New England.

"With families changing their insurance plans on average every three years, the insurers reasoned that by the time one of (our) children avoided diabetes or other obesity-related health problems due to the program intervention, that child would no longer be covered by that insurer," Clarke writes in a Boston Globe column. "Therefore, the insurer would lose its investment in making that child less obese."

The Boston Globe reports how local schools are boosting the physical activity of its students at recess to help curb childhood obesity, and in the process are discovering some unintended benefits.

Conservatory Lab Charter School and other elementary schools around the area are bringing in leaders — often college athletes — to organize more vigorous recess activities like kickball, tag and Hula-Hooping.

“Now there is zero inactivity and almost zero incidents of discipline problems on the playground,” says Annie Sevelius, codirector at Conservatory Lab. “We hardly have any fights. Before, there were skirmishes, arguing, grabbing, and trash-talking.”

Researchers from Harvard Medical School have led the development of a prototype "return on investment calculator" that can measure the value of prevention services. Using a Boston-based mobile health program called the "Family Van" to test the tool, the team found that for the services provided in 2008, this program, in the long run, will return $36 for every dollar invested.

The researchers used published data from Partnership for Prevention's National Commission on Prevention Priorities (NCPP), which assigns values to a broad array of preventative practices, as well as published data on the cost-savings of preventing avoidable emergency room visits, the team developed an algorithm that "calculates" a return on investment ratio, thereby quantifying the value of mobile health care to the overall health care system.