Promoting Healthy Communities and Preventing Childhood Obesity: Trends in Recent Legislation

Summarizes state legislation enacted in 2009 in the areas of healthy eating and physical activity, such as school nutrition and BMI measurements, and healthy community design and access to healthy food, such as safe routes to school and farmers' markets

Promoting Healthy Communities and Reducing Childhood Obesity: Legislative Options

Summarizes legislation proposed or enacted in 2007-08 in the areas of healthy eating and physical activity such as nutrition, physical education, and obesity prevention and treatment, as well as healthy community design and access to healthy food

Restoring Health to Health Reform: Integrating Medicine and Public Health to Advance the Population\u27s Wellbeing

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a major achievement in improving access to health care services. However, evidence indicates that the nation could achieve greater improvements in health outcomes, at a lower cost, by shifting its focus to public health. By focusing nearly exclusively on health care, policy makers have chronically starved public health of adequate and stable funding and political support. The lack of support for public health is exacerbated by the fact that health care and public health are generally conceptualized, organized, and funded as two separate systems. In order to maximize gains in health status and to spend scarce health resources most effectively, health care and public health should be treated as two interactive parts of a single, unified health system. The core purpose of health reform ought to be the improvement of the population’s health. We propose five criteria that would significantly advance this goal: prevention and wellness, human resources, a strong and sustainable health infrastructure, robust performance measurement, and reduction of health disparities. Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes provisions addressing these criteria, population health is not a central focus of the reform. In order to guide health reform implementation and to inform future health reform efforts, we offer three major policy reforms: changing the environment to incentivize healthy behavioral choices, strengthening the public health infrastructure at the state and local levels, and developing a health-in-all policies strategy that would engage multiple agencies in improving health incomes. Adopting these reforms would facilitate integration and dramatically improve the population’s health, particularly when compared to the health gains likely to be realized from a continued focus on access to health care services

Iowa Health Focus, July-August, 2010

Monthly newsletter for the Iowa Department of Public Healt

Shaping a Healthier Generation: Successful State Strategies to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Provides an overview of the socioeconomic and environmental risk factors and costs of childhood obesity. Presents examples of state policies to prevent the epidemic by promoting healthy behaviors in child care, school, community, and healthcare settings

Integrating Food Policy with Growing Health and Wellness Concerns: An Analytical Literature Review of the Issues Affecting Government, Industry, and Civil Society

Over the past few years, there has been growing global interest in the link between food and health. This paper provides a review of some of the recent literature describing these linkages. The first section provides an overview of findings that link the consumption of fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs, whole-grains, alcohol, sugar, dairy, fish, pulses, soy, and nuts to coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. The authors then summarize various international and domestic non-government organizations' views about these issues. The third section centres on the food industry and its responses to growing health concerns. The fourth section is an overview of public policy relating to food and health, including the use of food policy to change consumption behaviour and address obesity. This section also includes a discussion of the relevance of policies designed to discourage smoking to the current debate on obesity. The Conclusion highlights ways in which Canadian food policy can be adapted in order to better promote health and wellness.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, Agribusiness,

Shared Value in Chile: Increasing Private Sector Competitiveness by Solving Social Problems

Over the last few decades, Chile has experienced rapid and sustained economic, social, and institutional development. Crucial challenges remain, however, in the form of social inequity, lack of opportunity, mistrust, and social unrest. The Chilean private sector is at an inflection point in its relationship with society. The corporate sector has both contributed to and benefited from the growth and development of the last decades, but remaining social challenges pose significant constraints to the continued growth of the private sector. High levels of mistrust regarding the role of business in society reflect a widespread belief that profit making activities are merely a demonstration of corporate greed. The Chilean private sector faces a frequently antagonistic relationship with government and civil society that will likely worsen unless companies are able to find ways to authentically link their businesses to efforts to solve Chile's social problems. On the other hand, if government and civil society conclude that the private sector has no contribution to make to the country's social and economic development strategy, Chile will squander an important engine for creating shared prosperity. The good news is that there does not need to be a trade-off between private sector competitiveness and greater prosperity for all Chileans. Shared value, a concept explained in Harvard Professor Michael Porter and Mark Kramer's Harvard Business Review articles, suggests an approach for companies to increase their competitiveness and profitability by helping to solve social problems. The public sector and civil society can increase the social benefits from shared value by thoughtfully partnering with the private secto

Bringing the Good Food Purchasing Program to Buffalo, Challenges and Lessons Learned

The Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) builds on locally established community initiatives and goals to leverage institutional purchasing with the hope of transforming the food system. The program focuses on five core values: local economies, nutrition, a valued workforce, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare. The City of Buffalo shows tremendous potential to benefit from the GFPP. In the Buffalo Niagara region alone, “public institutions feed 163,000 public school students, 89,000 college students, and 6,000 correctional facility inmates each year—a total of 258,000 people.” Los Angeles, California has demonstrated the positive effects that the GFPP has had on the local food system. In order to bring the program to the City of Buffalo a better understanding of the program is necessary. The goal of this report is to aid the organizations in Buffalo who are working to bring the GFPP to the city. The report does this by outlining the time and steps involved in the program, identifying opportunities and challenges, identifying lessons learned, and providing recommendations

Health Benefits of Urban Agriculture

Health professionals increasingly recognize the value of farm-and garden-scale urban agriculture. Growing food and non-food crops in and near cities contributes to healthy communities by engaging residents in work and recreation that improves individual and public well-being. This article outlines the benefits of urban agriculture with regard to nutrition, food security, exercise, mental health, and social and physical urban environments. Potential risks are reviewed. Practical recommendations for health professionals to increase the positive benefits of urban agriculture are provided