Objective

HEALTHY is a 3-year middle school intervention program designed to reduce risk factors for type 2 diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes risk factors at baseline in a cohort of 6,358 sixth-grade students is reported.

Research design and methods

Forty-two schools at seven U.S. sites were randomly assigned to intervention or control. Students participated in baseline data collection during fall of 2006.

Results

Overall, 49.3% of children had BMI >or=85th percentile, 16.0% had fasting blood glucose >or=100 mg/dl (<1% had fasting blood glucose >or=126 mg/dl), and 6.8% had fasting insulin >or=30 microU/ml. Hispanic youth were more likely to have BMI, glucose, and insulin levels above these thresholds than blacks and whites.

Conclusions

Sixth-grade students in schools with large minority populations have high levels of risk factors for type 2 diabetes. The HEALTHY intervention was designed to modify these risk factors to reduce diabetes incidence.