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
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
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
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
Obesity published its first supplement focused on community-based solutions to childhood obesity. The aims of the supplement are to highlight evidence from recent community-based intervention studies and provide unique perspectives on where the field needs to go in the future. Healthy Eating Research director, Mary Story, PhD, RD, was a guest editor of the supplement.
A RWJF-sponsored conference on childhood obesity and children’s body mass index (BMI) has led to a special supplement on the surveillance, screening and reporting of children’s BMI. The conference, which was held in January 2008, convened a forum of researchers and clinicians who are addressing obesity in their respective fields. The goals of the meeting More
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
Using the Yale Rudd Center Public Opinion on Obesity Survey, this study examines how individuals’ demographic/health characteristics, political attitudes and beliefs about the causes of obesity affect their support for obesity-reduction policies. Included in the study were seven obesity metaphors; how much respondents’ agreed with or used these metaphors was strongly predictive of whether they More
Numerous authoritative reports have identified environmental and policy interventions as the most promising strategies for creating population-wide improvements in diet, physical activity, and obesity. Yet many methodologic challenges to conducting environmental and policy research must be overcome to enable this area of study to advance. A meeting titled “Study Designs and Analytic Strategies for Environmental More
This report identifies existing surveillance systems and databases containing information that not only tracks the current state of the childhood obesity problem, but that can also provide evidence to help address it.
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