came to the campus Wednesday and Thursday to film a segment on UB's Childhood Weight Control research program directed by Leonard H. Epstein, UB professor of psychology. The program helps children reduce and maintain a healthy weight throughout their lives.

CBS correspondent Harold Dow interviewed Epstein and spent several days with a family enrolled in the program, filming them as they followed their normal routine, including a visit to their counselor at UB.

The program is expected to air in November or December.

According to Epstein, one of the country's leading experts on childhood obesity, the prevalence of obesity in society is on the rise.

Thirty-three percent of adults and 25 percent of children are obese-they weigh at least 20 percent more than standard height-to-weight charts indicate they should. It's a pattern Epstein is working to reverse.

Epstein, who has studied obesity for 20 years, originated the research program that combines diet, exercise, and behavior modification to help children reduce their weight and maintain it not only as preadolescents, but throughout a lifetime.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the program is the only one in the country to document success in children over a 10-year period. He began it 17 years ago while a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

The medical risks associated with obesity are well documented, and obesity carries the same risks for children as it does for adults: an increase in health problems that include insulin resistance, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

In addition, obese children run a higher risk of becoming obese adults, notes Epstein. Children who are obese at age 10-13 face a 60-70 percent chance that they will become obese adults. "Very few will outgrow it," he says.

Furthermore, Epstein says, there are significant medical problems related directly to being obese as a child and adolescent. He cites a Harvard Growth Study showing that males who were obese at age 15 had a greater rate of mortality and morbidity 50 years later, regardless of their adult weight. Researchers also have found that childhood obesity relates to early puberty, which in girls is strongly associated with an increased risk of premenopausal breast cancer, Epstein notes.

Given the potential problems they face as they grow older, it becomes increasingly important for obese children to reduce their weight before puberty and keep it off for life.

"If you want to delay puberty, you have to start treating it at age 9 or 10," says Epstein. He points to the fact that in the United States the average girl reaches sexual maturity at age 11, while in China the average age is 16.

UB's Childhood Weight Control Program has worked during the past two years with approximately 120 families with obese children to help them lose weight and keep it off. Another 40 will enter the program this fall. Designed for 8-12-year-olds, the program requires that participants be joined by at least one of their parents in making a commitment to change not only their weight, but their entire way of life.

"You can't treat a childhood weight problem without also treating a parent," says Epstein. Since environment and strong support of the children enrolled in the program are crucial to long-term success, the program is most effective when the entire family is involved.

The 16-week Childhood Weight Control Program adopts a three-prong approach that advocates a balanced diet, regular exercise, and behavior modification.

The cornerstone is the Traffic Light Diet, a nutritious, low-calorie program of eating that is easy to understand and apply. Foods are categorized as "green," "yellow," or "red" according to their caloric and nutritional values. The "green" food group, which consists primarily of vegetables, is made up of foods that are low in calories and can be eaten without limitation. "Yellow" foods, such as skim milk and apples, which are higher in calories but also needed for a balanced diet, can be eaten in moderation. "Red" foods, such as potato chips and sweets, are high in calories and low in nutritional value, so these are strictly limited.

Food is not the only contributor to obesity, Epstein notes. Obese children do tend to eat more, but they are also significantly less active than their non-obese counterparts. And that activity level may have as much or more to do with obesity than what they eat. To address this issue, the Childhood Weight Control Program also emphasizes what Epstein calls a lifestyle exercise program.

The problem most people have is that it's too easy for them to be sedentary, Epstein says. He suggests that they rearrange their environments to encourage themselves to be at least moderately active: For example, put the exercise equipment in an airy, well-lit room and banish the television to an uncomfortable corner in the basement.

Television is no help in battling obesity, says Epstein, who is also studying this relationship. Not only do obese children watch more television, he notes, but the more television children watch, the greater their risk of becoming obese.

The average child watches three and a half to four hours of television a day, Epstein states. "By the time the average child is in high school, he has spent more time watching television than he has attending school."

All of these factors help illustrate why it is so difficult to get people to start an exercise program -let alone maintain one.

"When we first began the Traffic Light Diet," says Epstein, "we focused on aerobic exercise"-30-minute workouts three times a week that raise the pulse to 60-70 percent of capacity and make the exerciser sweat. While this type of exercise is effective for weight control, getting people to keep up a regular routine of this intensity is no easy task. "Most research on adherence to exercise programs suggests that the higher the intensity, the lower the participation," he says.

Surprisingly, however, many lower-intensity activities are just as effective as high-intensity ones. "The caloric expenditure per mile is the same if you walk or run," Epstein points out. Accordingly, program participants are encouraged to incorporate more moderate physical activity, on a regular basis, into their everyday lives. For example, by walking back and forth to school rather than forcing themselves to jog two miles every day.

Since the lifestyle exercise program offers more flexibility and choice, "it makes it a lot easier to do your activity and gives you more sense of control," says Epstein. Participants in the program also lose more weight and do better over longer periods of time.

"Weight-loss effects do not depend on intensity," he says. "The ideal situation when exercising is to burn fat. The body preferentially burns fat at lower levels of intensity" as opposed to glucose, which is burned during higher-intensity workouts. "What's more important is to shift people from being sedentary to being moderately active."

Participants in the lifestyle program are encouraged to increase their energy expenditure through activity. "It's easy to modify your life to get 300 calories of expenditures a day," says Epstein, offering a concrete example: Leave your car at the far end of the parking lot rather than the space closest to your destination, and then walk a mile at lunch. Although it may take longer to see the results, participants are more likely to stay with the program.

And when they do see results, the effects, psychologically, are positive.