A National Epidemic—and a Presidential Priority
By Matt Gruenburg, March 18, 2010
“Medicine shouldn’t be [about constantly] operating on a population that is steadily killing itself, which is essentially what we are in the first steps of doing with a third of our children [being] obese.”
That’s Bill Clinton, describing the status quo on childhood obesity at a March 17 event hosted by Newsweek. Some people, President Clinton said, will always be “biologically vulnerable” to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and other conditions that require expensive, risky treatments and surgeries regardless of obesity. But as it stands, our nation is burdening Americans needlessly with disease— Americans who could be healthy if we tackled the factors that cause obesity: neighborhoods without spaces for physical activity, deficient access to healthy foods, high-calorie school lunches. It’s for this reason that the 42nd President called childhood obesity the “number one public health problem in the country”.
Listening from the second row, I was impressed with how far this issue has come, and how quickly it’s moving now. (Kay’s post last week also discussed the building momentum.) First Lady Michelle Obama is out on the road speaking on the issue as a part of her “Let’s Move” campaign. The President’s Task Force on Childhood Obesity will release its recommendations for federal action by early May. And there’s huge energy behind incorporating the latest nutritional guidelines into the upcoming reauthorization of the federal Child Nutrition Act.
Yesterday’s event was a sign of that momentum, too: Clinton was talking to Newsweek because the focus of its latest issue is on childhood obesity. And this week, Newsweek is hosting a series of events to explore the issue even further.
Clinton focused on the role everyone can play in reducing childhood obesity rates, and the proper balance between policy and individual behavior. And he shared stories of success. The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a partnership between Clinton’s foundation and the American Heart Association, recently released an evaluation of its agreement with the American Beverage Association and other key producers. Its findings were heartening: over the last five years, they reduced the number of beverage calories shipped to schools by 88 percent. As Clinton put it, “we didn’t ask them not to make money; we just asked them to make it in a different way.”
I’ve been working on this issue for almost four years now with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s childhood obesity team, and we’ve never seen a time quite like this one. Sitting in the National Press Club on Tuesday, listening President Clinton promote strategies so many in this field are working to was amazing to me. Four years ago, I had no sense that the issue would have moved so far – and so fast.
