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“Your level of physical activity puts your health at high risk.”

“Your level of stress and coping puts your health at high risk.”

“Your sleep habits put your health at high risk.”

Many of us might look at these warnings, nod and say, “Yeah, that’s me.” These assessments, however, can also be found in individualized reports prepared for much younger folks, whether it’s a West Des Moines eighth-grader, a 10-year-old 4-H Club member in Indianola or a 14-year-old whose family is registering at a Des Moines homeless shelter.

The Center for Advocacy and Outreach at Blank Children’s Hospital is testing a children’s health-risk assessment that could potentially be used throughout Iowa. The online tool is designed to provide kids and their parents with instantaneous feedback about their health habits, as well as suggestions about how they can improve their health.

“It just struck me as an excellent tool for us to use to try to gather data on the health status of kids, which is really difficult to come by,” said Kathy Leggett, the center’s director.

Iowa children, like kids across the United States, face increased risk of heart disease, juvenile diabetes and obesity as fast-food-laden diets, lack of exercise and other poor health habits become more prevalent. It’s estimated that approximately 20 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight; one in three kids between the ages of 4 and 19 eats fast food daily; and the average child spends more than four hours a day in front of a TV, computer or video game screen.

Last fall, Blank’s Center for Advocacy and Outreach received a $9,675 grant from United Way of Central Iowa, which it has used to provide about 50 health-risk assessments over the past six months for children at Des Moines’ homeless shelters. About 30 clients of the Young Women’s Resource Center have also taken the assessments through the grant, with follow-up assessments scheduled later this month. The online assessment, which takes 20 to 30 minutes to complete, was developed by Protocol Driven Healthcare Inc., a Des Moines-based disease-management software company. PDHI developed the online assessment tool in 2005, using funding provided by the Iowa Chronic Care Consortium and input from an advisory board led by Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and the Wellness Council of Iowa. The company then tested it on about 300 children in six rural school districts in 2006, using a $57,000 grant from the Wellmark Foundation.

Following that initial effort, however, there was little interest in the assessments from Iowa health plans or other organizations, said Paul Greenwood, PDHI’s executive vice president for business development.

Recently, though, there’s been a “paradigm shift” among organizations as they recognize the value of such assessments, Greenwood said. “I’m now talking with the 4-H about starting a program to begin with 25,000 children on Sept. 1, but hopefully moving to a statewide program that would (reach) 150,000,” he said.

Later this month, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Iowa will also begin offering the assessments to its members, Leggett said. Additionally, more than half of the eighth-grade class at Indian Hills Middle School in West Des Moines, about 170 students, are also scheduled to take the assessments this month.

By testing the assessment tool in a variety of settings, “it’s giving us a chance to just work out all the logistics and any of the barriers to how we can make this work better and then we adjust it from there,” Leggett said. The center is still offering free assessments to nonprofit organizations through the grant.

“It’s also a benefit for an organization,” she said, “because many of these organizations have health as a component of what they teach, but they have not had the opportunity to get data on a timely manner for the kids they work with. This will provide that for them, and hopefully then help guide their efforts.”

The children’s assessments could provide a valuable addition to any employer’s health-risk assessment program, Leggett said.

“The report gives a lot of great information,” she said. “As a parent, as I look at this, there are things I may not be thinking about because life is so busy. To sit down with a child and do this may bring some focus to areas that maybe we weren’t thinking about as parents.”

For more information about the children’s health-risk assessment program, contact Kathy Leggett at the Center for Advocacy and Outreach at Blank Children’s Hospital by phone at 241-5963, or by e-mail at leggetkm@ihs.org.