Posts Tagged ‘overweight’

Selling Food

January 16th, 2013

Food marketing to children and teens is a major public health concern. Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company announced it will no longer accept advertisements for junk food on its child-directed television, radio, and online sites.  Disney also updated its nutrition standards for foods that can be advertised to children.

The food and beverage industry spends $2 billion per year advertising food to children.  Kids aged 2-11 years old see an average of 13 food ads a day, mainly promoting unhealthy foods. This contributes to our country’s obesity epidemic; one in every three children is overweight or obese. To see some of the best and the worst examples of advertising food to children, check out the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity — Food Marketing Practices. 

Food marketing can make the job for parents harder or it can be used to promote healthy eating. In a recent study by Cornell University, children chose apples over cookies when Elmo stickers were placed on the apples. (The Elmo sticker increased the consumption of apples, though, did not have an effect when placed on the cookies.) 

Our nutrition education programs like the Arizona Nutrition Network and WIC do a good job of promoting healthy foods but are small compared to industry efforts. The Food Marketing Workgroup (FMW) is made up of partners like the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the American Heart Association, the National PTA, and other organizations. They are working together to eliminate harmful food marketing, particularly marketing aimed at people most vulnerable to obesity. The FMW is now urging Nickelodeon to stop marketing junk food to kids. To find out how you can be part of this action, visit the FMW website.

 

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Up to Us!

May 15th, 2012

Arizona is way over the limit – almost 2/3rds of us are overweight or obese.  A report released last week shows that the cost to all of us is $190 billion every year.  There’s a great opportunity happening right now with a national push to fight the obesity problem. 

The CDC, along with HBO, The Institutes of Medicine and several private partners created a series of documentaries, called Weight of the Nation, to highlight the situation and spark action from all of us.  You can see parts 3 and 4 tonight at 8 p.m. on HBO or you can watch them all online.

I’ve told you about one of our staff, Matt Gainey, who made tremendous strides to change his health.  Matt is just one of many success stories in Arizona.  We’ve created a website that collects stories like Matt’s as well as success stories from communities across the state.  Let us know what you’ve done to make a difference in your community – together we can put the brakes on the growth of obesity and work for people to have health at every size.

“Update: We were incorrect in the earlier posting about free access to HBO. In fact, if you are not an HBO subscriber, you can watch the documentary online for free here: http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/”

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AZ Women’s Health Status Report

April 2nd, 2012

Our Bureau of Women’s and Children’s Health team released the Arizona Women’s Health Status Report recently. The report details how Arizona women are doing toward achieving optimal health and wellness. Topics covered in the report include physical activity, oral health, mental health, access to care and general wellness.

The good news is that 83% of Arizona women report having good to excellent health, but the report shows that 50% of women over 25 years old are overweight or obese. As is often the case in public health- women with lower incomes face bigger challenges with their health. The percentage of women who reported being physically active increased with education and income. Among women who had an annual income of less than $20K- 31% reported frequent mental distress, while only 6% of those with an annual income of $50K or more reported mental distress. 

The social determinants of health have been well-established in public health literature, and this report really brings home the connection between income and educational levels to health outcomes, in addition to race and ethnicity, among Arizonan women.

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AZ Data to Drive Public Health Interventions

October 24th, 2011

Making good decisions about prioritizing which public health issues to tackle and how to target our interventions rests on our ability to collect and analyze public health data.  For infectious disease surveillance that means have a base of solid reporting and surveillance so we can analyze infectious disease trends.  For chronic diseases, we need to know the behavioral trends and the demographic background so that we can target our resources effectively.  That’s where our annual Behavioral Risk Factor Survey plays a role… our brand new 2010 Report provides key data that can be used to monitor and plan health promotion and help our public health system to better target our intervention strategies for chronic disease prevention in Arizona. 

The (federally funded) Behavioral Risk Factor Survey is conducted throughout the year and examines the self-reported habits of 4,700 Arizonans.  The report contains key data on lifestyle risk factors contributing to the leading causes of death and chronic diseases- and measures the public health system’s progress on smoking, overweight, high blood pressure, exercise, flu/pneumonia vaccination, cholesterol, seat belt use, fruit/vegetable consumption and other risk factors.  These data give us some of the tools we need to set priorities and craft intervention strategies.  Judy Bass was the point person for this year’s report.  Well done Judy!

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Incentivizing Chronic Disease Self-Management

April 12th, 2011

This month AHCCCS told us that they’ve picked our Bureau of Tobacco & Chronic Disease as the state applicant for HHS’ Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Diseases Grant.  The grant proposal (which will be developed with AHCCCS) must be turned in to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services early next month.  The grant is competitive, so we’re not certain whether we’ll be successful, but we like our chances.

The idea is to incentivize AHCCCS members to participate in the evidence-based Stanford Chronic Disease Self Management Program, which provides opportunities for members to build skills and gain the confidence to actively participate in their health management.  Our team would build on the current infrastructure and capacity to deliver workshops to include AHCCCS members through expansion of partnerships offering workshops in local communities across Arizona.

The program that we’ll be proposing will create rewards for incremental successes in the disease self-management process, including enrollment in program “adherence” and demonstrated reduction in risk factors (e.g. blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels, weight, and tobacco use).  The program would conduct assessments at client progress at 30, 60, and 90 days, and will conduct an analysis of continued reductions and/or maintenance after 12 months.  The specific rewards will be determined on the basis of focus groups findings conducted with adults with chronic disease.  There’s strong evidence that this program design is critical to promoting and enhancing disease self-management efforts, and improving the overall health and cost burdens of this population.

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Yet Another Obesity Call to Action

August 19th, 2010

You probably think I sound like a broken record because I’m always writing about obesity…  but it really is the dominant public health issue of our time.  Last week, the CDC released its latest Vital Signs report called “State-Specific Obesity Prevalence Among Adults – United States, 2009,”…  which finds that nine states had an obesity rate of 30 percent or higher in 2009. In comparison, no state had an obesity rate of 30% or more 10 years ago.  The report also finds that people who are obese incurred $1,429 per person more in medical costs every year when compared to people of healthy weight, and that the nation’s total medical costs of obesity were $147 billion in 2008.  OK that’s the problem- so what’s the solution?

 

The solution is a combination of public policy changes and community planning, combined with better education and personal responsibility.  For example, people need to eat more fruits and vegetables and fewer foods high in fat and sugar; drink more water instead of sugary drinks; be more physically active; and watch less TV.  As a society, we need to promote policies and programs at school, at work and in the community that make the healthy choice the easy choice.  You can read a lot more on the CDC’s Vital Signs Adult Obesity website.

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AZ Obesity Update

July 6th, 2010

The Trust for America’s Health released their annual obesity report.  Overall, the national trend toward increasing obesity rates continued it’s march forward.  Arizona ranked in the middle of the pack, but the pack itself in increasingly unhealthy.  More than two-thirds of states have adult obesity rates above 25 percent. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent.

Most Americans think that being overweight is a simple matter of personal responsibility.  While it’s clear that people need to make healthy choices and get more exercise if we’re going to turn this thing around, there are some other factors.  Healthy foods cost more than junk food and good food is hard to find in many neighborhoods.  But you can be sure that cheap processed foods are available everywhere.  Also, finding safe, accessible places to be physically active can be a challenge.  While everyone faces barriers to healthy choices, the obstacles are often higher for people with lower incomes and less education.

Those of you that work on public health prevention should become familiar with the key elements in the report, especially the intervention strategies  in the second half of the report.  By the way…  our Empower Pack is an example of the kind of strategy that we need more of to turn this ship around.

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Out of Control Diabetes Treatment Costs

February 17th, 2010


The US obesity epidemic is costing Americans more and more each year.  It’s not just the decreased quality of life that it causes, but it causes a whole host of downstream problems like diabetes and circulatory problems.  Type 2 diabetes had been a disease of folks over 40 that became seriously overweight over time- but it’s increasingly becoming a pediatric disease.  The Medicaid, Medicare and regular private insurance treatment costs for Type 2 diabetes is rapidly increasing- and becoming not just an epidemic- but a financial crisis as well.

Researchers from the journal Diabetes Care published a paper recently http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/12/2225.full that projects that over the next 25 years, the number of Americans with diabetes will increase from 24 million to 44 million. During the same time period, annual spending related to diabetes is expected to increase from the current $113 billion to $336 billion (in constant $2007).

The health care costs for treating diabetes in AZ today is about $2 Billion dollars annually- and if we don’t do something about this epidemic with a better diet and exercise, the costs will be nearly $7 Billion annually in AZ- again in constant dollars.

Now pause for a second and take a breath… the out year costs for treating diabetes nationally are projected to be almost half the size of the financial bailout or the ARRA stimulus package every year (if we don’t do something about this epidemic).

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