Since 1882, Children's Memorial Hospital has been the place where kids come first. That was the year Julia Porter transformed the loss of her 13-year old son Maurice into a gift for our community's children, and turned an eight bed cottage at Halsted Street and Belden Avenue into the Maurice Porter Memorial Hospital. Today, in its second century, Children's Memorial has evolved into one of the nation's top pediatric institutions, ranked annually for excellence by US News and World Report, and has expanded into a multi-building campus that provided care at 13 Chicago-area locations for over 140,000 children in fiscal year 2009 alone. The Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC) was founded in 2002 within the Center for Obesity Management and Prevention (COMP) at the Children's Memorial Research Center of Children's Memorial Hospital, in response to Chicago's elevated rates of childhood obesity (24% in Chicago compared to 15% nationally, with rates as high as 50% in some Chicago neighborhoods.) In just over 8 years of operation, CLOCC has evolved into a nationally recognized childhood obesity prevention model with the active participation of over 2200 partners from more than 850 organizations.

The mission of CLOCC (Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children) is to confront the childhood obesity epidemic by promoting healthy and active lifestyles for children throughout the metropolitan Chicago area. Our work fosters and facilitates connections between childhood obesity prevention researchers; public health advocates and practitioners; and the children, families and communities of Chicagoland.

CLOCC is a multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, community-based program that combats childhood obesity at multiple levels: individual, family, community and society. The shared work of CLOCC and its partners involves community development, community-based programming, clinical-community connections, school-community linkages, legislation and regulation, environmental and policy change, and more. CLOCC's role as convener and disseminator of information is critical in the fight against childhood obesity. Core consortium activities associated with this role include hosting Quarterly Meetings (attended by 200 people), an interactive and community-responsive website, promotion of the 5-4-3-2-1 Go! healthy lifestyle message, and an organizational structure that includes numerous vehicles for community input and influence (e.g., External Advisory Board, Executive Committee, Corporate Advisory Committee, and Working Groups). CLOCC's community-based activities are led by a team of Community Networkers that unite and organize stakeholders in ten vanguard neighborhoods with high rates of childhood obesity. The CLOCC model of Community Organizing for Obesity Prevention (CO-OP) builds the capacity of neighborhood organizations and families to develop and implement locally-generated, culturally relevant nutrition and fitness programs to prevent childhood obesity and promote health and wellness. CO-OPs are active in the Humboldt Park, Englewood and Pilsen neighborhoods. CLOCC also leads city and state-wide policy initiatives, such as the development of the Childhood Obesity Prevention Consensus Agenda, which resulted in four new state laws in 2005, and the City of Chicago's Interdepartmental Task Force (IDTF), an active collaboration among 11 City agencies to integrate child obesity prevention throughout Chicago's public institutions. In the last year CLOCC has begun to focus attention on community-based environmental change strategies to help local organizations make neighborhoods more walk and bike friendly.