This year the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation committed half-a-billion dollars to fight obesity. One of our highest priorities for the health of the American people is to reverse the epidemic’s course by 2015.
Wherever I go these days, people I meet are supportive of the goal, but not always clear on what they can do in their lives and communities. I know that reversing the childhood obesity epidemic sounds like really heavy lifting – and it is – if you’re doing it all alone. But you’re not. None of us are. It breaks down into what we each do every day, no matter the scope or scale of the task at hand. We begin one step at a time.
To get you started, here are five practical steps. Steps that are based on solid evidence, can deliver the desired results, and – most importantly -- you can really do them. Taken on their own, one at a time, they don’t seem like much. But put them together, one building on another, eventually they have the power to change the health future of an entire society.
Here, then, is Risa’s List of Five Things You Can Do Right Now.
Number One
: Create a healthy food environment at school.
School is where our children spend their days learning lessons that’ll stay with them for life. It makes no sense to teach kids well in the classroom – and then turn them loose on high-energy, low-nutrition foods and drinks the cafeteria and vending machines.
Work with your public schools to limit access to the high-calorie snacks and drinks. Provide instead unsweetened drinks and low-calorie foods rich in nutrients. Evidence can be your best advocate. In Philadelphia, for example, hard data convinced the city’s public schools to impose the toughest vending machine restrictions in the country.
Be a watch-dog, too. Public schools are required to comply with the USDA guidelines for a healthy school breakfast and lunch. Maybe as many as 80 percent, however, either cannot comply – or simply don’t bother. Steal a page from Arkansas’s book – push schools to publicly disclose details on their food and beverage contracts and revenues. With transparency comes accountability.
Number Two:
Improve the availability of healthy foods at home.
Learn how the ‘food geography” of your community and state affects diet, health and obesity among both kids and adults. Look around low-income neighborhoods. Chances are there won’t be a good supermarket anywhere nearby. Our research makes a direct connection between poor neighborhoods, poor access to healthy food and poor health outcomes. We know that access to supermarkets equals availability of healthy foods. And here’s a persuasive pitch to make to local leaders: A supermarket is part of economic development. It brings new jobs and new dollars along with healthy food.
Numbers One and Two address the Energy-In part of the equation. Three, Four and Five are all about Energy Burned.
Number Three is: Increase the level of physical activity and exercise in schools.
Only 15 percent of kids walk or bike to school. Once they get there the chances of regular physical exercise may be little to none. The scope of what you can do here is limited only by your imagination.
► In Dougherty County, Georgia, for example, the middle schools converted some empty classrooms into fitness centers. They’re equipped with cardio machines, weight training, aerobic classes and walking clubs. The local YMCA provides instructors. Teachers and principals volunteer as trainers. So far about 200 students take part. And their families get to work out free, too.
► In Greensboro, Florida, the local high school is part of a state-wide fitness program called “Step Up, Florida.” Activities include three-mile hikes in a recreational forest. The whole school, principal included, walk the track at the end of school.
► In Evansville Indiana so many kids show up early every day at PlazaParkMiddle School that a local run-walk club organized morning walks. About a third of the school’s 600 kids start the day walking around school grounds and corridors. The principal reports that learning’s up, discipline problems are down, and the kids this past school year logged more than 12,000 miles walked. //
When good programs become lasting policy, culture changes.
Number Four: Provide convenient and safe facilities where children can play.
Kids need safe, well-equipped and accessible places to play and safe ways to get there from home and back. The evidence on this is really good. A recent RAND study examined how a neighborhood’s physical characteristics affect exercise and health. They found:
► Public safety is a public health barrier in low-income neighborhoods. Playgrounds are locked on weekends, kids stay indoors, and BMI measures are higher.
► If there’s a park within a mile of where you live chances are you and the kids are going to regularly walk there and back.
► Having several types of businesses in a neighborhood increases resident walking trips.
Here’s where public policy can run the epidemic right off its tracks. All the arcane stuff of local governing can be exploited to promote healthy living and physical exercise. Urban design and land-use policies; zoning regulations and building codes; transit routing and schedules; even street lighting and crosswalk placement; and, of course, crime prevention. Bottom line: Neighborhood design is a public health issue.
And finally – Number Five: Limit screen time.
On average, kids spend almost seven non-school hours eachday in front of a TV, computer, video game, DVD or listening to music. Sitting there, with no exercise at all, they’ll opt for junk food every time. I know. I’ve been a working mom myself. The evidence suggests we have to get them early or we won’t get them at all.
► For 3rd and 4th graders, the NIH’s “We Can” website links teachers and parents to a school program called SMART – for Student Media Awareness to Reduce Television. Teachers can download a year-long curriculum designed to motivate kids to cut down on TV and video games.
► For grades 6 through 8, Harvard’s Planet Health program offers classroom curricula – including a campaign to reduce screen time that’s called “Power Down.”
► In a 2-year study at 10 middle schools, Planet Health reduced the amount of time boys and girls watched television, and lowered the prevalence of obesity among girls.
By the way, the experts advise us to turn off the TV during family meal time. Research shows that families who eat together tend to eat more nutritious meals than families who eat separately.
This is a five-step starter kit. It will get you started, but then it’s up to you.