Communities have begun to implement creative strategies to confront the obesity
epidemic directly. Here are some examples:
If your community has a program, write to us
so that we can share it with others.
State Programs
Find a list of nutrition and physical activity programs developed in some
U.S. State health departments to prevent chronic diseases including obesity
at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
Find out if your state legislature has been active in attempting to pass
laws to prevent or manage obesity. Search the website of the National
Conference of State Legislatures.
Health Communication Regarding Obesity
There are many challenges in communicating messages to the public about obesity,
including the clutter of multiple messages, skepticism about experts, negativity
surrounding weight management, and public confusion and misunderstandings about
scientific results.
Creating partnerships between communities and primary care physicians, clinics,
hospitals, government health departments (federal, state, local), health organizations,
and businesses can be useful for developing messages that are consistent with
scientific evidence, and for providing an effective network to distribute messages.
Data Tracking - Measurement of Obesity
Data on overweight and obesity prevalence are collected nationally, and have
been useful in alerting public health officials to the state of obesity as an
epidemic. Only a few local communities collect data on overweight and obesity.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy People
2010, the benefits of documenting progress through data collection in communities
are to:
- see real changes that result from the actions of a community program.
- create interest in people who have any doubts or are unfamiliar with the
actions of a community program.
- demonstrate effectiveness to funders of a program.
For more information on tracking progress and outcomes in communities, read
Healthy People in Healthy Communities: A Community
Planning Guide Using Healthy People 2010.
