March 12, 2025
ACHP member plan Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan (CDPHP) knew it had a role to play when it learned that the city of Troy needed more resources to address childhood obesity. CDPHP took a two-fold approach to the issue, aiming to hear directly from community members and pediatric care providers about how to best support childhood wellness.
Pediatric primary care physicians expressed a lack of resources needed to support patients facing childhood obesity, so CDPHP provided more tools to help their patients and reduce the incidence of childhood obesity in their community. CDPHP also committed to focusing more on childhood obesity by integrating the issue into their ongoing Population Health Management initiative.
CDPHP immersed themselves in the community by collaborating with Troy School 2, a local school, and Healthy Capital District (HCD), a local health care nonprofit, and by hosting a community forum to better understand what was and wasn’t working. From this dialogue, CDPHP learned that although resources like healthy food offerings and outlets for physical activity were available in the community, parents and teachers were not sufficiently connected to them. Through further outreach, they determined that a phone-accessible resource guide would be the most effective way to connect parents and teachers to these existing resources – so that’s exactly what CDPHP plans to develop. Along with HCD, CDPHP will create a Troy Community Resource Guide, helping parents and families find the local programs and tools they can use to prevent and address childhood obesity.
CDPHP has centered the community in every step of this process, emphasizing the importance of hearing from and empowering pediatric care providers, parents, teachers and local nonprofits. The result is an initiative tailored exactly to Troy’s needs, designed to uplift existing leaders in the community and strengthen parents’ abilities to keep their kids healthy. CDPHP is demonstrating that when local health plans take action, patients and providers win, and the entire community takes one step closer to defeating chronic diseases.
