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- Title
Making America Fit and Trim--Steps Big and Small.
- Authors
Gerberding, Julie L.; Marks, James S.
- Abstract
The article focuses on the prevalence of overweight people in the U.S. as of 2004. By all measures, the weight problem of the U.S. has grown to epidemic proportions. Only tobacco poses an equally large, potentially reversible, long-term threat to the country's health and well-being. Fortunately, this national tragedy is beginning to receive the attention it deserves, and U.S. residents are confronting the truth--that people's expanding waistlines are creating a public health crisis that, if recent estimates prove accurate, threatens to erode hard-won gains in life expectancy and health-related quality of life. The trends are astounding and truly alarming, particularly in what they portend about the health of the youngest generations. Since 1980 the prevalence of overweight has doubled for children and tripled for adolescents. As with tobacco use, much of the obesity problem is rooted in childhood and adolescence. As the problems of overweight and obesity have grown, so have the needs for new action and more research to deal with the complex set of challenges they pose. Sadly, prevention and health protection activities account for far less than 5% of the nation's spending on health services. Likewise, the nation's investment in public health research to define effective intervention strategies and the cost-effective means to disseminate them is a minuscule fraction of what is needed. The need for collaboration with the private sector has never been greater.
- Subjects
UNITED States; OBESITY; OVERWEIGHT persons; BODY weight; PUBLIC health; HEALTH
- Publication
American Journal of Public Health, 2004, Vol 94, Issue 9, p1478
- ISSN
0090-0036
- Publication type
Editorial
- DOI
10.2105/AJPH.94.9.1478