The University of Hawaii has been awarded more than $2.1 million to help combat childhood obesity, according to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz today.

The amount will be awarded to the university’s Children’s Healthy Living Center of Excellence, which oversees children’s obesity prevention programs and policies for U.S. jurisdictions in the Pacific region. The center will use the funding to train educators, practitioners and researchers on childhood obesity prevention, while measuring the success of different methods for the next six years in underserved Pacific populations.

“Childhood obesity is a problem everywhere, but our state doesn’t have the same resources as those on the mainland to address the issue,” said Schatz in a news release. “This funding allows our state to partner with Alaska and other Pacific islands to better understand what we can do to keep our kids healthy.”

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a national program to survey health and nutrition, it does not cover Hawaii, Alaska or nine other remote Pacific jurisdictions of the U.S.