Implementing the Health Care Reform Law to Tackle America's Childhood Obesity Epidemic
7/2/2010
President Barack Obama calls childhood obesity one of the most urgent issues that we face in this country, and First Lady Michelle Obama is concerned that todays obese children will not lead the full lives they deserve.
Washington, D.C.— President Barack Obama calls childhood obesity “one of the most urgent issues that we face in this country,” and First Lady Michelle Obama is concerned that today’s obese children will not lead the full lives they deserve. Together, through the Presidential Task Force on Obesity and the Let’s Move! campaign, they are working to begin the challenge to eliminate childhood obesity within a generation. “Confronting America’s Childhood Obesity Epidemic: How the Health Care Reform Law Will Help Prevent and Reduce Obesity,” released today by the Center for American Progress, highlights the important fact that focusing health care reform on things like better prevention of chronic illness, improving health outcomes for all Americans, and “bending the curve” of burgeoning health costs will intrinsically help reduce childhood obesity. The newly enacted health care reform law provides a raft of initiatives and programs that will provide many of the tools in the public health and health care areas that are needed to implement the priorities and goals that the president’s task force has developed. The precise capabilities of the provisions of the new law to address childhood obesity—both directly through programs such as nutrition labeling and indirectly through provisions such as an improved focus on maternal and child health—are governed by the specific authorities provided and also by the focus that is taken in their implementation. But if aggressively and fully implemented, they provide an important foundation to better tackle the epidemic of overweight and obese children and adolescents. This American obesity epidemic has been 30 years in the making and it will not be solved overnight. And of course, as the president’s task force recognizes, there are other key areas outside of health care that are essential for the best solution. Arguably, factors such as nutrition, affordable access to healthy foods, and increased physical activity will collectively have a greater impact on the rates of obesity than health care. Addressing these issues will require significant commitments from all levels of government, as well as communities, business, and families. But the health, social, and economic costs obesity imposes on our kids and our society are simply to large and too important for us to ignore.
John Neurohr, 202.481.8182 jneurohr@americanprogress.org
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