Welcome to IME Community. I’m the most excited I’ve ever been in my career to launch IME Community. Over the last 17 years of my career as a community pediatrician, I’ve worked diligently to address the childhood obesity epidemic on every level. The whole time my vision has been “creating community solutions for children’s health”. It wasn’t until I went through my personal weight loss journey in 2017 and discovered the transformational power of life coaching that I started to think about how to get that power to teens.
I’m proud of the work in the community and love so much of it, especially the partners, but when I reflect on it and the data, it’s clear that I still hadn’t moved that close to my original vision. I’ve been willing to throw out what doesn’t work for teens and choose what works and build IME Community with you.
What makes a community? As soon as I stopped thinking of community as limited by a geography and decided to move my vision to focus on working with teens and creating a virtual community, I started having a blast creating IME Community.
Teens have very limited opportunities for effective treatment and certainly very limited or no opportunities that are fun. When I left my pediatric practice to start my non-profit Teach a Kid to Fish, in 2008, 4% of U.S. teens were severely obese. When I founded and led a treatment clinic in 2015, 6% of U.S. teens were severely obese. The latest data shows 9% of U.S. teens are severely obese. Data also shows that 80% of teens who are overweight or obese will become obese adults. So, you may say the data isn’t on our side. I suggest thinking of it in a different way. We are quick and lazy to blame the individual when we know we have generations of Americans who have now grown up in obesogenic America. Teens are seen as a commodity, a marketing target at every turn, and when we look at disparities, access to healthy foods, safe physical activity opportunities, it seems almost absurd to blame the individual. It’s even harder for teens who are marginalized and in poverty to transform their health. I believe the problem is we just haven’t given teens anything that works.
I don’t like to waste my time and teens don’t either, especially on something that seems restrictive and rigid and non-sustainable.
IME Community is where self-love is your superpower to achieve your weight and life goals and make your mark in the world. It’s where teens get to choose what works and get all of the life coaching skills and tools they will need to create any result they want. Teens get to measure their own success. I believe in the power of the individual and the power of building a strong community of support with other teens who are on the same journey. I’m excited to bring everything I had to revolutionize my health and follow my dreams to create IME Community for teens. We get to co-create and build this city, IME Community, together.