Advocacy Project: Issue Overview

Goal: Promote health and reduce chronic disease associated with diet and weight.

What is the issue?
This issue addresses the increase of overweight Americans due to an increase of caloric intake and a lack of physical activity. Healthy People 2010 has been moving away from this target by 83% from 1988-1994, and from 1999-2002.

Listed below is a piece of legislation proposed to address the issue:
H.R.3468: Promoting Health and Preventing Chronic Disease through Prevention and Wellness Programs for Employees, Communities and Individuals Act of 2009.

Who is affected by the issue?
Minorities, children and low-income families are the ones that are most affected by this issue. Although all Americans in this country are affected by this rising trend, disparities within race and ethnicity and income are prevalent. Healthy People displayed data that shows that the highest increase in adult obesity was the highest in the black non-Hispanic population with a 30-39% increase and in the white non-Hispanic population with a 22-30% increase. Also, the percentage among Mexican Americans and black non-Hispanic Americans ages 6-19years was 50% higher than the white non-Hispanic population. I believe that we as a country are losing because of the increase of chronic health problems related to obesity. These would include diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke and other conditions. This is also causing a huge financial strain on our country due to the estimated cost of obesity being about $117 billion. The only people that I can think of that would gain from this issue would be the pharmaceutical and medical industries who are designed to “fix” this problem by offering surgeries, medications and other services to reduce the weight in Americans.

What are the consequences?
Consequences in not addressing this issue would be a decrease in years of life due to the increase of chronic health problems related to obesity. “Dietary factors are associated with 4 of the 10 leading causes of death-coronary heart disease, some types of cancer, stroke and type 2 diabetes. They are also linked to high blood pressure, osteoporosis, iron deficiency anemia and other conditions”. In addition to a decrease of overall wellness, we would also suffer a loss productivity in our society. This is because the unhealthier an individual is, the more sick days they will need to take, ending in a loss of productive workers in our country.

What is the economic/social impact of the issue?
As I mentioned before, “the estimated cost of obesity to the United States was $117 billion in 2000”. According to Wikipedia, “obesity exceeds health-care costs associated with smoking and problem drinking and accounts for 6-12% of national health care expenditures in the United States. In addition, annual hospital costs for treating obesity-related diseases in children rose to $127 million.” Obesity is linked to loss of productivity and working days due to their health problems associated with weight. Benefits to the increase of obese people would be the medical and insurance companies. They would increase their revenue because of the marketing of weight loss and supplements as well as the push to undergo surgery such as bypass, bariatric surgery, etc.

What are the barriers? How can they be overcome?
Like I stated above the main barrier to resolving this issue is increase of “newly developed pharmaceuticals and increased use of bariatric surgery to be used as treatment options”. There is no sufficient evidence that these options are healthy for overall weight management. They may be a one time fix but patients are more likely to gain their weight and more back after using these services. By promoting prevention is the key in overcoming this issue. By offering health promotion and awareness services we can educate our society about the problems associated with obesity.

What are the resources?
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) offers great resources on the prevention of obesity and promotion of healthy living. You can check out Obesity Prevention and Control to view interventions in both education and community settings. They also offer a Tools and Resources page that show a database of resources, Obesity Prevention Guidebook and some Statistical Information on the obesity rates.

What is the history of this issue?

This has been a huge issue for our society for many years. Obesity has been on the rise since the 1980s and each year it gets worse and worse. According to the CDC, obesity has risen 60% in the past 20 years and the rates have tripled children in the past 30 years. Below is a map of the obesity rates from 1985 and another in 2009. If we take a look at Minnesota alone (one of the healthier states) it went from having <10%>30% of their population being obese.

With the rise of fast food chains and the hustle and bustle of our everyday American lives, our society has moved from family dinners at home to grabbing take-out from the local McDonalds. Sure these places are convenient and cheap but they do no justice on our nutritional needs, and by the looks of it we are suffering dearly. With the rise of the obesity problem, also comes a growing interest from health educators and health professionals. There are plenty of programs out there that target the obesity rates in both children and adults. If you want to check out the Policy Resources you can view the Overweight and Obesity Policy Resources.

Allies and Opponents

Allies of this issue would be the health professionals, health organizations and others who are concerned with the growing rates of obesity. I think another allie would include company owners that are currently suffering from loss productivity of their employees due to conditions related to obesity. All in all, I think that whoever wants to be healthy and promote a healthy lifestyle would be in favor of this bill because they value that important factor of their life. On the other hand, there would also be some opponents. These would include the insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical reps, and others who are in the health "treatment" industry. With the lowering of obesity, the need for weight-loss supplements and surgeries would decrease. This would also lead to a decrease in jobs in that field. Also, insurance companies would not have to cover these surgeries or treatment options, potentially putting their jobs at risk.

In order to please Allies and Opponents of this issue, it would be necessary to show how both can benefit. It is best to look at the long run and how these companies can benefit by increasing the productivity of our society. Sure, we would hope that it would decrease the need of health care in regards to weight related diseases but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't need their services in other areas. We could increase the use of health promotion programs that these companies can implement into their facilities and this would make up for the lost jobs.

My Recommendation:

Vote YES to the promotion of health and the reduction of chronic disease associated with diet and weight.