| Leadership for Healthy Communities Recognizes Five Officials During Summit |
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Chosen from more than 40 nominees representing states, localities and school districts nationwide, the five award recipients were Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City, NY; Superintendent Roel Gonzalez, Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District, TX; Mayor Darwin Hindman, Columbia, MO; Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco, CA; and Mayor Claude Ramsey, Hamilton County, TN. The leaders were recognized during an awards dinner at Leadership for Healthy Communities’ second biennial Childhood Obesity Prevention Summit, which was held May 7-8, 2009 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's president and CEO, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A. (pictured above), provided the keynote address. "When they write the history of America's response to childhood obesity, they are going to start with you," Lavizzo-Mourey told the audience. "They're going to start with the wisdom and good sense that you brought to this problem." Lavizzo-Mourey encouraged state and local leaders to deliver their message to "both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue," so that public and private leaders can work together to halt the epidemic. This message of collaboration echoed throughout her address, as did the notion that the best policies don't pit the idea of personal responsibility against the recognition that environmental forces often unconsciously shape our lives, but that they represent both approaches. "Too few people still really understand that where you live affects how long and how well you live," she added, stating that even in the District of Columbia, where the summit was held, 52 percent of children from the most low-income families are overweight and obese, primarily because too few grocery stores exist in their neighborhoods. "They have no recourse but to rely on fast-food outlets and corner stores that stock everything that's bad for you and very little that's good for you." Before turning the spotlight onto the award winners, Lavizzo-Mourey told audience that the debate about the epidemic has shifted from "I don't get it," to "what are we going to do about it," and that leaders have been taking decisive actions to reverse the trend. The result is that while childhood obesity is still at epidemic proportions, for the first time in 30 years, children are actually consuming fewer calories than they did in the last few years and the steep increases in the epidemic are starting to reach a plateau. Each of the five award recipients have made their contributions to reversing the epidemic by expanding access to healthy foods and/or opportunities for increased physical activity in their communities. After accepting his award, Newsom, whose administration is providing every San Francisco resident with free health care, focused his message on the importance of prevention as an ethical obligation as well as an economic imperative. "Because you know what we know, that it's a lot less expensive to invest in wellness than to treat your sickness and so now our dollars are acting accordingly," Newsom said. He added that he wants San Francisco to be the first city to charge a fee for calorically sweetened beverages, which he said would be used to help fund his prevention programs.Hindman, whose active living initiatives are improving physical activity levels in the college town he serves, remarked on the importance of removing environmental barriers to activity. "We started with a rails-to-trails conversion and after a huge controversy, it became the most popular park in town, and it became so popular that we were allowed to go on from there." Accepting Bloomberg's award, Linda Gibbs, the city’s deputy mayor of health and human services, stressed how important it is for governments to measure and track the progress of childhood obesity prevention policies and programs. "The note I want to add is really around the importance of putting metrics to all of these initiatives," Gibbs said, "putting the efforts and the dollars, quite frankly, into the evaluation to know whether or not they work." She went on to say that because the research into the effectiveness of policies and programs designed to curb childhood obesity is just starting to come in, leaders must take risks, evaluate their efforts and then share their successes or failures with others. To watch the award speeches, click here. To read about the healthy eating and active living policies that these leaders championed in their localities, click on the links below:
Superintendent Roel Gonzalez, Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District, Rio Grande City, Texas |
On May 7, Leadership for Healthy Communities presented its first-ever Healthy Communities Leadership Award to five outstanding elected and appointed officials who were recognized for implementing innovative policies and programs that promote healthy eating, increased physical activity and childhood obesity prevention.
