By Cliff White
Staff Writer
   Robbie Lipsman and Dr. Tory Rogers are dug in at the front line of the fight against childhood obesity.
   Lipsman and Rogers work for Let’s Go!, a Portland-based organization founded with a specific mission and a distinctive method of achieving it. Currently, Let’s Go! is involved in 12 communities in the Portland area, including South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Gorham and Scarborough.
   “Let’s Go has a really interesting history,” Let’s Go! project director Lipsman says. “Two simultaneous conversations were happening between the non-profit health organizations and for-profit corporations about the growing health problem with our youth. Somehow, players came together at a very high level – senior executives and CEOs, and they attempted to find a way to work together collectively, because they thought by working together they could have the greatest impact.”
   Through significant commitments of both finances and company resources, in 2006, Let’s Go! was born. Making the program unique was its unconventional approach toward improving children’s health, as well as its temporary nature. Lipsman says the program will lose its funding, and by effect, cease to exist as an organization by 2011.
   “Hopefully though, we’ll be done with our mission, the people we will have trained on the ground in our communities will continue our work,” Lipsman says. “In this day and age, it’s hard to find money to sustain things. If you can take a pot of money and use it to create something that is self-sustaining, that’s ideal, and a more effective use of resources.”
   Lipsman is one of four people working full-time for the organization. She says there are more than 40 additional staff members “on the ground” working part-time at individual projects in specific communities.
   “What we’re trying to do is work closely with people on the ground,” Lipsman said. “Our job is really to collaborate with other people. We’re not trying to create a permanent Let’s Go! structure. If four people can make 40 people own this project, I think it will have a greater effect in the long run.”
   Saco resident Rogers, pediatrician at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, and also the school department physician for the Saco schools, has helped create and expand local programs through her work as a physician advisor to Let’s Go!.
   “She is nationally recognized for her work in youth obesity,” Lipsman says. “She is the academic, and in some cases, the scientific expert behind what works and what doesn’t work in designing what we’re going to do.”
   Rogers helped to create Let’s Go! Takes 5-2-1-0 to School initiative, the goal of which is to increase physical activity and healthy eating amongst children and youth from birth to age 18, Rogers says. The 5-2-1-0 mnemonic represents the goals of eating five fruits and vegetables a day, limiting “screen time” to two hours per day, engaging of one hour of physical activity per day and increasing water consumption as well as low fat milk while limiting sugar sweetened beverages.
   Let’s Go! programs avoid singling out overweight kids and any kind of practice which makes people feel like targets, Rogers says.
   “What makes one person gain more weight than another is a very complicated thing to figure out,” Rogers says. “I see a lot of kids with unhealthy lifestyles – it’s not just about their weight. I don’t care what they look like, I care what’s happening with their bodies. To target the obese is not the best way to help them. Kids don’t want to be made to feel different, they just want to fit in.”
   Lipsman says the Let’s Go! approach is unique in that it attempts to work at the problem from all angles. She says the question Let’s Go! has tried to riddle out is, “How do we help bridge all of the different potential places of positive influence in a child’s life so that there is a consistency in their environment on how they promote a healthy lifestyle?”
   The answer the organization has come up with is a comprehensive approach, with education focused not only on the kids themselves but also on the adults who come into regular contact with them and have a large effect on the way they live.
   “We’re trying to change the whole environment these kids are growing up in,” Lipsman says. “We’ve chosen to not just focus on one segment of the community. We’re working with schools and teachers, as well as doctors and parents, trying to get them to all coordinate their efforts and give a consistent message to their kids. The issue is that the environment surrounding a child can have a huge influence on the decisions they make.”
   Lipsman and Rogers are confident the programs are working.
   “Everyone feels much more optimistic about tackling this problem if they know they aren’t doing it alone,” Lipsman says. “Schools feel bombarded, parents get overwhelmed, doctors don’t know where to start. By getting them all on the same page, it becomes a shared responsibility, and they all fit into the Let’s Go! initiative like pieces of a puzzle.”
   Both Lipsman and Rogers sought to join the fight against childhood obesity and the Let’s Go! initiative for personal reasons.
   “In my work as a pediatrician, I was seeing a rise in diabetes and cardiovascular problems in children,” Rogers says. “I heard in childhood obesity a call to action.”
   Lipsman heard the call at a younger age – during her own youth.
   “I was a heavy child myself and have spent most of my life trying to manage my own healthy lifestyle, so that desire to help others with this is rooted there,” Lipsman says. “But I also find it so alarming to look around and see what is happening to our culture, where it is becoming more and more difficult to make healthy decisions. That’s why I like the Let’s Go! approach of trying to create a different environment instead of pointing the finger.
   “These days, kids really have to put in some active, hard thought about their health for themselves,” Lipsman continues. “Hopefully, with the we’re giving youth a tool they can use for the rest of their life, about how they make healthy choices. All youth can benefit from this learning process. All children can benefit from learning better choices in, what to eat and how to live better, healthier lives.”
   For more information on Let’s Go!, visit the organization’s Web site at www.letsgo.org.