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Centre for Healthy Active Kids
The Centre for Healthy Active Kids (CHAK) is dedicated to improving child health through innovative research and transformative approaches to clinical care and education.
We’re improving our understanding on healthy nutrition and physical activity, and obesity treatment and prevention. CHAK aims to advance research, education and family-centred clinical care locally and around the world in child and adolescent obesity. By preventing, understanding, and managing obesity and related disorders, we're improving health, wellness and quality of life for children and youth worldwide.
Promoting healthy, active lifestyles for children and youth
Working collaboratively across SickKids, CHAK explores new methods of prevention, treatment, research, and education in the following areas.
Healthy Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Wellness
We aim to understand how optimal nutrition, physical activity and wellness improve health for all children, irrespective of body size.
Prevention and Treatment of Obesity and Associated Risks
We study the risk factors for obesity, how it evolves, and what can be done to prevent it. The team also researches clinical outcomes and predictors of how to better treat children to ensure healthy living and prevention of conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease.
Mechanisms of Body Weight Regulation and Associated Complications
We evaluate how the environment, biology, and psychology interact in the regulation of appetite and weight, including how exercise improves health and may prevent diabetes and heart disease in children being treated for conditions such as cancer and congenital heart disease.
Research themes
We have several collaborative research projects understanding the early origins of obesity and childhood disease through birth cohort studies.
An international birth cohort to prevent childhood obesity which includes cohorts from South Africa, China and India.
A research study enrolling healthy children aged 0-5 years linking early life exposures to health problems including obesity, micronutrient deficiencies, and developmental problems.
Studying childhood obesity and bariatric care in Canadian children.
Other researchers are trying to understand the physiology and mechanisms of development of obesity and chronic disease.
We're examining the microbiome and its relation to the development of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and the impact of gestational diabetes on offspring epigenome, adiposity, and cardiometabolic risk factors. The team has also published Chronic Stress, cognition, and food cue reactivity in Prader-Willi Syndrome: A Magnetoencephalography Study.
- CoMFORT (Cow’s Milk Fat Obesity Prevention Trial)
- We’re looking at cow’s milk recommendations in the prevention of obesity.
- PREVENT (Probiotics for Every Newborn vs Treatment-as-Needed Comparative Effectiveness Trial)
- Targeting child mental health and household poverty: Impact of a poverty intervention in primary care on preschool children’s emotional and behavioural health
- This is a pilot study.
- PARENT
- Focusing on preventing obesity in toddlers through group-based parenting intervention in primary care.
Healthy Living Clinic
Medical trainee placements are available for elective rotations in obesity training in the Healthy Living Clinic. More extended training placements are also available contingent on funding. We have training opportunities available for allied health care professionals in nursing, dietetics, exercise counselling, psychology and social work. For more information on current training opportunities in the Healthy Living Clinic, visit our clinic page below.
Project ECHO
Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) Obesity Management aims to connect community-based healthcare providers with specialists at SickKids. Project ECHO expands the knowledge base of healthcare professionals through innovative virtual mentorship and collaboration. This model uses a combination of highly interactive videoconferencing, educational presentations, and hands-on workshops.
Latest news
October 17, 2017
Could on-and-off fasting help prevent obesity?
Researchers examined the effect of an intermittent-fasting regimen, without restricting caloric intake, in mice. They found that an 'on-and-off' fasting regimen not only prevented obesity in mice, but also improved metabolism by changing the quality of fat in the body. The study is published in the Oct. 17 online edition of Cell Research.
February 16, 2017
An Ontario research team led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) examined the use of electronic medical records to track rates of overweight and obesity in children.
June 14, 2016
Emergency doctors address a less obvious health emergency: childhood obesity
Dr. Dan Magnus, Clinical Fellow in Paediatric Emergency Medicine at SickKids, gives his perspective on the importance of physical activity and healthy eating to combat one of the major health emergencies affecting children today: obesity.
Staff
CHAK brings together the brightest minds in research, education, and patient care to ensure every child leads a healthy, active life.
We're working to understand the underlying mechanisms that impact childhood obesity and its related conditions through innovative research projects. Scientists Our team is working on a wide range of programs related to healthy lifestyles, including the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes in children, and exploring how changes in diet, environment and physical activity can improve metabolic health.
We are clinicians, educators, students and researchers working together to understand how childhood nutrition, physical activity, behaviour, and metabolism affects child health across the weight spectrum.
- Dr. Jill Hamilton
- Dr. Catherine Birken
- Dr. Brian McCrindle
- Dr. Elizabeth Dettmer
- Dr. Alene Toulaney
- Dr. Daina Kalnins
- Dr. Catharine Walsh
- Dr. Zdenka Pausova
- Healthy Living Clinic
- Endocrinology
- Cardiology – Lipid Clinic
- Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition Clinics – Liver Clinic
- Nephrology – Hypertension Clinic
- The Infant and Toddler Growth and Feeding Program
- Adolescent Medicine – Eating Disorders Program
- U of T – Department of Nutritional Sciences, Child Nutrition Centre
Milestones and achievements
Clinical
We have been collaborating with our partners in the Healthy Living Clinic, Eating Disorders/Adolescent Medicine, and Psychiatry to develop the Eating for Well Being Program, a facilitator’s guide for group programming that addresses the complex needs of patients with binge eating disorder. As part of the Medical Psychiatry Alliance, we completed a pilot day treatment program with a focus on healthy living for youth with mental health diagnoses.
Research
Several CHAK projects have received funding, including several new collaborations involving fundamental and applied scientists from SickKids, UofT and the international scientific community.
Highlights include:
- The TARGet Kids (The Applied Research Group for Kids) cohort (Birken CS)
- Visceral fat, neuroinflammation and brain health: towards early detection and prevention of preclinical dementia (Pausova Z)
- The impact of gestational diabetes on offspring epigenome, adiposity, and cardiometabolic risk factors (Hamilton JK)
Education
SickKids’ Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) for Obesity Management is a telehealth education program that expands the knowledge base of healthcare professionals through virtual mentorship and collaboration. TeleECHO clinics, core curriculum, and bootcamp offered 32.5 hours of programming, with a total of 233 participants registered, representing inter-disciplinary professionals from the primary care community and all 11 network sites of the Ontario Pediatric Bariatric Network (OPBN).
Advocacy/Knowledge Translation
Meant2Prevent is a type 2 diabetes prevention initiative for children and youth presented by Sun Life is a national collaboration with 13 children’s hospitals in Canada and is led by CHAK. We have created a series of tools, resources, and programs directed towards healthcare providers and patients/families to support the prevention of pediatric type 2 diabetes.
Healthy living tips and resources for families
We’ve put together a number of useful resources – including links on parenting, nutrition and food, mental health, obesity, sleep, and more – at Meant 2 Prevent and Meant 2 Prevent Kitchen!
Check out these handy articles, too!
