Center Offers Personalized Obesity Care for Youth

A new Nutrition and Wellness Center co-led by Cincinnati Children’s Division of Endocrinology and the Center for Better Health and Nutrition provides a different approach to managing metabolic conditions related to excess weight.

The one-stop clinic offers patients coordinated and personalized access to experts in five specialties: endocrinology, gastroenterology, nutrition, preventive cardiology and psychology.

Launched in November 2024 at the Winslow building, the center lets specialists with expertise in overweight and obesity complete initial assessments faster and quickly connect children and adolescents to the care they need. This multidisciplinary approach streamlines care for patients, significantly reducing the time families spend away from school and work while optimizing health outcomes with a special focus on providing psychosocial support.

“It’s unusual to have all five specialties together in one place,” says Amy Sanghavi Shah, MD, MS, division director, but it’s a model that provides holistic care. “We also make sure all patients have access to exercise, nutrition and psychological support.”

A Focus on Healthy Behaviors

Traditionally, care for obesity, hypertension and diabetes is siloed. Families go to several appointments at multiple locations. With the Winslow building opening, Nancy Crimmins, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist, and Shah saw an opportunity to bring everyone together.

“As obesity doctors, we wanted to ensure patients get all of the same information at the same time,” Crimmins says.

Now when children and teens arrive for a new patient appointment, they receive a full evaluation complete with an InBody body composition analyzer. The InBody tracks personalized metrics like whole body muscle, fat and water to assess health and wellness.

Patients see clinicians from all five specialties plus a dietitian and an exercise physiologist. The care team focuses on healthy behaviors, not weight. The body composition measurement drives home this approach by focusing on muscle mass and other metrics besides weight.

“We think about wellness in so many different dimensions—nutrition, health, psychology—all of them are interconnected,” Shah says.

The overall goal is to provide care that reduces long-term comorbidities by helping patients and families live lifestyles that lead to improved physical fitness, mental wellness and overall health and well-being.

Exercise, Nutrition and Shared Decision Making

The Nutrition and Wellness Center works closely with families to formulate a care plan based on their patient’s unique needs and interests.

“We don’t hand down a directive,” Crimmins says. “We tap into what’s important to the family, what works for their schedule and what the kids enjoy doing.”

The center’s dietitians and exercise physiologists work closely with patients and develop creative and personalized plans.

All patients get access to free weeknight exercise classes and nutrition education. The hour-long fitness sessions are offered at the Winslow building. Exercise physiologists lead the classes, which provide built-in peer support as the kids are working out together, Crimmins says.

Patients and families can also take cooking classes and learn about making good food choices in the center’s metabolic kitchen.

“Right now, we know exercise and nutrition are important, but we don’t know the best treatments for each patient,” Shah says. “Ultimately, better collaboration between clinical care and research positions us to tailor therapies to improve patient outcomes.”

Designing Effective Care to Meet Patient Needs

For now, clinicians are still learning about new drug therapies and how they affect weight and other health conditions in children, like metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver (fatty liver) disease. The team continues to study feeding behaviors and eating disorders.

Going forward, the center is focusing on:

• Advocating for access to weight management medicines
• Expanding psychology services
• Promoting research
• Refining program protocols

The team strives to offer effective care that meets patient needs. Crimmins says the approach to treating obesity is always changing. For example, a fellow in the program is studying whether patients want to know their weight at each appointment or if there are other ways to share that information.

Ensuring access to psychological care is a key part of the center’s approach. Crimmins says the team wants to help patients boost and maintain their self-esteem. Education and care can help equip families with skills and tools they can use to address and manage the emotions and thoughts that often accompany obesity and overweight conditions.

“The psychosocial pieces are a big part of examining what patients really want out of these visits and how we can be inclusive and supportive as we provide care,” Crimmins says.

There is still much that’s unknown about obesity and overweight conditions and why some children get them, and some don’t.

“Having all of us together in one clinic helps set the stage to understand why some kids get hypertension or diabetes,” Shah says. “And we can learn how to design preventive measures.”

(Published April 2025)

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