A bipartisan group of former cabinet secretaries released a comprehensive and actionable plan to improve America’s physical and fiscal crises, driven by the alarming rates of obesity and chronic disease today. Former Secretaries of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Ann M. Veneman and former Secretaries of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala and Mike Leavitt released the recommendations today, calling needed attention to our mounting health care spending, which is expected to reach $4.6 trillion dollars annually by 2020 and consume 19.8% of GDP.
The report, entitled, Lots to Lose: How America’s Health and Obesity Crisis Threatens our Economic Future, from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative, calls on the public and private sectors to collaborate in creating healthy families, schools, workplaces and communities, focusing on existing best practices that can be implemented on a large scale to broaden their impact and help scale back obesity in the U.S. The co-chairs recognize that given America’s limited federal resources, any effective plan to reduce obesity and health care costs will need to engage private sector partners and build on successful examples, targeting those actions with the most promise to bring about large-scale shifts over time.
Read the full press release here.
Read the Report: Lots to Lose: How America’s Health and Obesity Crisis Threatens our Economic Future
Featuring BPC Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative Co-chairs
Senior Fellow, BPC Former Secretary of Agriculture
Chairman, Leavitt Partners Former Governor of Utah Former Health and Human Services Secretary
President, University of Miami Former Health and Human Services Secretary
Former Executive Director, UNICEF Former Secretary of Agriculture
Read the Report: Lots to Lose: How America’s Health and Obesity Crisis Threatens our Economic Future
Coverage
MSNBC: Andrea Mitchell Reports: Why Obesity is a major threat
Fox Business VIDEO: Obesity Costing U.S. Billions Per Year
The Washington Post: Health-care spending vs. health
The Hill: Lots to lose — How obesity is costing America
“Soon after he was elected in 1960, John F. Kennedy made physical fitness a defining principle of his presidency. In an article for Sports Illustrated titled ‘The Soft American,’ the president-elect wrote: ‘It is my hope … that the communities will … make it possible for young boys and girls to participate actively in the physical life; and that men and women who have reached the age of maturity will concern themselves with maintaining their own participation in this phase of national vigor — national life.’ More than a half century later, it is safe to say Kennedy would be appalled at the physical condition of our people.” – Glickman, Leavitt, Shalala and VenemanThe Hill, June 5, 2012
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Press Release: Bipartisan Policy Center Unveils Plan to Improve Nation’s Physical Health and Lower Health Care Costs
Related Posts
- Statements of support for Lots to Lose
- Obesity in America: Graphics, Links and Resources BPC Blog, May 23, 2012
- C-SPAN’s Washington Journal VIDEO: Obesity in the United States (Interview with BPC Senior Fellow Dan Glickman) May 11, 2012
- From A To B: Families Try To Bring Back Walking, Biking To School WAMU 88.5, May 11, 2012