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<br />: <br /> <br />breastfeeding. All were thorny public-health problems lacking a quick <br />fix, yet significant progress was made on each. In 2002, the Centers <br />for Disease Control and Prevention awarded Dr. Economos a $1.5 <br />million grant to fmd out whether the same social forces could work <br />in nutrition. <br /> <br />The goal of the researchers' Shape Up plan was to have Somerville <br />children bum more calories through exercise and take in fewer with a <br />healthier diet, for a total benefit of 125 calories a day. <br /> <br />What was missing from the program at first was a community champion, <br />someone like C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general who railed against <br />tobacco, or Ralph Nader in the battle over car safety. "I knew we <br />needed a sparkplug," says Dr. Economos. <br /> <br />She found it in Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, a lawyer and <br />volunteer football coach at the local high school. Mr. Curtatone says <br />he had gained weight on the campaign trail and was hoping to shed a <br />few pounds when Dr. Economos walked into his office to talk about her <br />hopes for a community-based obesity intervention in Somerville. "I <br />bought into it right away because I could see the potential," says <br />Mr. Curtatone. He figured projects to encourage exercise and good <br />eating could make the city a better place to live regardless of how <br />the experiment turned out. <br /> <br />"We're here to improve the lives of everybody in the city," says the <br />mayor. "It's not about an individual getting a gym membership." <br /> <br />Project Faces Challenges <br /> <br />Shaping up Somerville wasn't going to be easy. Only 3% ofthe city's <br />4-square-mile territory is open space. Thousands of cars roar through <br />Somerville every day on their way to Boston, making streets less than <br />friendly for walkers and cyclists. Among the town's first-, second- <br />and third-graders, 44% were already overweight or considered at risk <br />of becoming overweight, based on their body-mass index, according to <br />Dr. Economos. That's above the national figure of about 30%. <br /> <br />Though Somerville isn't among the more affluent Boston suburbs, Mayor <br />Curtatone quickly figured out that the type of changes Dr. Economos <br />envisioned didn't cost a lot of money. For instance, many people <br />couldn't fmd crosswalks because the paint had faded. The city <br />switched to a longer-lasting reflective paint. It redeployed school <br />crossing guards to areas where children were most likely to walk to <br />school, and the Tufts team gave parents maps of which routes were <br />staffed. The moves resulted in a 5% increase in the number of <br />children who walk to school, according to Jessica Collins, a former <br />Tufts project manager who now directs a Somerville community-health <br />program. <br /> <br />Separately, the Tufts researchers helped the city win a grant from <br />the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a bigger-ticket item, an <br />