HealthierUS initiative: Commitment to a legacy of better health and well-being for our children

By Mike Leavitt

We all want the best for our children — especially in health.  Yet when it comes to taking care of ourselves, we are not setting a positive example for children to follow.

Today, 70 percent of deaths in America are the result of a chronic disease. Most of us don’t take good care of ourselves when it comes down to basic habits like diet and exercise. We need to be pursuing prevention with the same rigor we give to treatment.

Healthcare professionals and scientists tell us that obesity is a major contributor to the onset of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases, and that obesity increases the risk of premature death by up to 50 percent. They also tell us that the best way to combat obesity is to adopt small changes in our diet and exercise habits. 

Still, more than a third of American adults are obese and only three in 10 adults — 30 percent — get the minimum 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, five days a week, the President’s Council on Physical Fitness recommends to stay healthy. This problem reduces the quality of life for millions of Americans, and costs the nation up to $117 billion annually.

We are used to thinking about these as “adult” problems, but we are quickly passing them on to our children. 

Children and teens are now being diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes (formerly known as “adult-onset” diabetes). In fact, one in three Americans born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes during his or her lifetime. 

Over the past two decades, adolescent overweight tripled, and in 2003, just a quarter of high school students were moderately physically active for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week — half the recommended 60 minutes for kids.

Children of ethnic and racial minorities often suffer from these chronic conditions disproportionately. For example, American Indian and Alaska Native children are as much as 30 percent more likely to be overweight than other children.

We owe it to ourselves to be taking better care of our health, and we owe it to our children to encourage healthier habits in their lives now. 

To help make activities available to children that will get them moving in the right direction, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has several activities underway as part of our HealthierUS initiative.

• HHS is currently proposing strengthening support of the Schools Health Index — an assessment tool for schools that helps them identify where they need to improve on physical education, health education, and school lunch and breakfast programs to establish a School Culture of Wellness program.

•HHS has partnered with the Ad Council and DreamWorks Animation SKG to launch a new series of television, print and Web-based public-service ads featuring characters from the popular Shrek movies, which promote physical exercise in a way that appeals to children. These ads will begin airing in February as part of the Department’s Small Steps campaign that launched in 2004.

•We are talking to CEOs from the food and beverage, media, entertainment and IT industries, and asking them to promote healthier options in their products and in their advertising to children.

•HHS is also developing Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans to provide a useful summary of the latest knowledge about exercise and health that will focus on specific populations, including children.

Through its family of agencies and partnerships, HHS is working on several initiatives that focus on the development of tools to help states, organizations and families reduce the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity in their communities.

•The National Obesity Action Forum was held to highlight important initiatives and successful interventions at the regional, state, and local levels to help families and communities promote health and combat obesity.

•The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s State-Based Nutrition and Physical Activity Program to Prevent Obesity and Other Chronic Diseases supports states with developing and implementing science-based nutrition and physical activity interventions.

•The Food and Drug Administration’s 2006 Keystone Report provided recommendations from experts in industry, government, civic organizations, and academia for improving consumers’ ability to manage calorie intake from foods prepared and purchased away from home.

•The National Institutes of Health’s program, Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity and Nutrition (We Can!), offers tips for parents, caregivers and communities to help children eight to 13 years old maintain a healthy weight.

Children are a critical place to start in making a change, but this is a problem that affects every age group, and requires action at every level. 

For our part, the federal government is working to improve the lives of the federal work force. Just last week, HHS and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management launched the HealthierUS Feds initiative to promote exercise and healthy behavior decisions among federal employees and their families.  We also teamed with the Veterans Administration, through the HealthierUS Veterans program, to educate veterans and their families about the risks of obesity and diabetes. By helping parents get on the right track to better health, we can also impact their children in a positive way.

We want to be partners with parents and communities because only they can steer children away from TVs and computers and get them outside on bicycle seats and swing sets. They can also pack healthy snacks instead of junk food for their kids.

That’s why HHS is focused on providing tools to help states and communities enhance their programs to encourage healthier choices for children. We are also working to find better ways to engage kids on the importance of physical activity and nutrition to help them form healthy habits early.

Making a change will mean taking a hard look at our personal habits and committing to making healthier choices for ourselves and our families in 2007. We have an opportunity to dramatically improve the health, happiness, and well-being of ourselves and our children. Let’s make the commitment to seize that opportunity.

Leavitt is secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.