Adequate (or Adipose?) Yearly Progress: Assessing the Effect of No Child Left Behind on Children’s Obesity. Working Paper 16873

This paper discusses how accountability pressures for schools to improve test score outcomes implemented under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may affect children’s obesity. Using a unique dataset of Arkansas schools that merged school-level information on test scores, obesity, and other demographic information, researchers found that NCLB accountability rules may have unintended negative consequences for More

Poverty, Food Insecurity, and Obesity: A Conceptual Framework for Research, Practice, and Policy

Recent trends in food insecurity in the United States parallel population increases in obesity. Historically, food insecurity and obesity have been viewed as distinct public health issues. However, since the mid-1990s, there has been growing interest in understanding the seemingly paradoxical relationship between these two issues. In this paper, the authors summarize findings from research More

Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH): Metrics, Incentives and Partnerships for Population Health

The July 2010 edition of Preventing Chronic Disease featured a set of essays and commentaries on selecting the best tools, or metrics, for measuring and monitoring the health of communities. The essays describe the characteristics of ideal metrics and explore their use in measuring various indicators of a community’s health, including health outcomes, health inequalities, health behaviors, More

Child Obesity: The Way Forward

Health Affairs published a special issue focusing on the childhood obesity epidemic and the local, state, and federal policy approaches that could have greatest impact for helping to reverse it. The March 2010 publication, which discusses findings from dozens of studies, includes articles from three Healthy Eating Research grantees: Claudia Probart, PhD, RD, Emma Sanchez-Vaznaugh, ScD, More

A Public Health Perspective on Healthy Lifestyles and Public-Private Partnerships for Global Childhood Obesity Prevention

This commentary uses a public health perspective to review the concept of healthy lifestyles for prevention of childhood obesity and explore how healthy-lifestyle initiatives are promoted through public-private partnerships. Healthy lifestyles encourage individuals and populations to consume a nutritionally balanced, diverse diet and to engage in regular physical activity to achieve and maintain health and More

Adolescent Obesity: Towards Evidence-Based Policy and Environmental Solutions

The purpose of the supplement is to present recent findings from RWJF grantees funded under the Healthy Eating Research and Active Living Research programs, as well as from RWJF’s Bridging the Gap program and Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Supplement content focuses primarily on adolescent obesity prevention and the need for More