History and Mission

History

Naomi Neufeld, MD, FACE, is an attending physician and former director of pediatric endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. She is the author of the chapter on childhood obesity in the Atlas of Clinical Endocrinology. She is also a Charter Member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and serves on its board of directors and a Fellow of the American College of Endocrinology. Deeply involved in research into the causes and cures for obesity, she identified the relationship between childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Naomi tells the story of KidShape . . .

Twenty-five years ago I began to see an increasing number of overweight children, some as young as five years old. These children were suffering from obesity-caused diseases rarely seen in children years earlier. It quickly became evident that pediatricians frequently did not know how to handle the problem and that standard approaches to fitness didn’t work with children. I repeatedly watched children’s eyes glaze over during discussions of diet and exercise. As the crisis grew, I knew I had to find a better way. And so in 1986 my colleagues at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and I set up the first program to use the power of the entire family to bring about permanent change in overweight children. We called it KidShape, and it was the first program to use the power of the entire family – the family table – to bring about permanent change.

We conducted KidShape classes at one location in Los Angeles for more than ten years. In 1998, after Christiane Rivard, a registered dietitian, joined us as program director, we opened a second KidShape site in Ventura County, California, and eventually grew to 25 sites in Southern California.

Although we had been licensing the KidShape program for several years, we realized that more children and their families could lose weight and become more healthy if we helped others run KidShape programs throughout the country instead of focusing our efforts on Southern California. For a complete list of current KidShape sites, click here.

Mission

KidShape’s mission is to help build healthy families by providing effective family-based pediatric weight management programs for overweight children, ages 6 to 14. The goal is promote long-term healthy lifestyle changes in eating habits, physical activity, and self-esteem. KidShape’s culturally competent group classes are offered in English and Spanish.