New obesity prevention recommendations and wellness policy research

August 7, 2009—The CDC has issued recommendations for obesity prevention strategies, and a new report indicates the quality and implementation of local wellness policies could be improved.  

The CDC has issued its first ever set of comprehensive recommendations to promote healthy eating and active living and reduce the prevalence of obesity in the United States.  Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States contains 24 obesity prevention strategies focusing on environmental and policy level change initiatives that can be implemented by local governments and school districts.  Most of the strategies involve schools in some capacity, and include:   

1. Increasing availability of healthier food and beverage choices in public service venues, restricting availability of less healthy foods and beverages, and limiting portion sizes;
2. Limiting advertisements of less healthy foods and beverages;
3. Discouraging consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages;
4. Requiring physical education in schools;
5. Increasing the amount of physical activity in PE programs in schools;
6. Increasing opportunities for extracurricular physical activity; and
7. Locating schools within easy walking distance of residential areas.

An Implementation and Measurement Guide has also been developed to assist local governments, states, and other key policy makers implement the strategies.  

Local wellness policies are existing policies schools can be leveraged to meet many of the CDC’s new recommendations.  A new report, published by Bridging the Gap, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, indicates that overall, the policies developed by local districts in response to the requirement in the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 are not as strong as they could be and implementation is lacking.  

The report, Local Wellness Policies: Assessing School District Strategies for Improving Children’s Health, School Years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, represents the most comprehensive ongoing analysis of local wellness policies to date.  The report shows that while the vast majority of U.S. students went to school in a district that had a wellness policy in place by the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year, the quality of the policies varied greatly. Major findings from the study suggest that many policies were not comprehensive or well-developed and that many lacked a strong implementation and evaluation component. Key recommendations based on the findings of this study include improving the nutritional quality of school meals, addressing nutritional standards for foods sold outside of federal school meal programs, restricting food and beverage marketing, strengthening physical activity provisions of the policies, providing adequate funding for wellness policy implementation, and ensuring that implementation and evaluation are high priorities.  

To learn more about local wellness policies, check out NSBA’s School Health Programs’ “Addressing Wellness 101” Packet or email schoolhealth@nsba.org.  

Sources: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 58(RR-7); and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website.