Sounds Like a Plan: The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Issues Its Report

Alison and Sue's picture
Submitted by Alison and Sue
June 3, 2010

Congratulations to the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity for successfully laying out a comprehensive plan that includes a series of thoughtful recommendations and benchmarks! We are pleased to see a strong focus aimed at monitoring progress by tracking the impact of interventions on three key indicators: childhood obesity trends, improvement in children’s diet quality and physical activity levels. Thanks to the work of this group, our country now has a national blueprint for tackling childhood obesity. 

The White House Report – a true wake-up call for the nation –  points out that too often the connection between food served at school and the school’s responsibility to educate, enable and motivate healthful nutrition habits is weak or non-existent. It calls for improved nutrition education in our schools and recognizes that many teachers do not have the knowledge and skill to integrate nutrition education into their classroom curriculum. 

 
ACFN could not agree more. We believe the nation needs a coaching corps of registered dietitians – the most qualified nutrition professionals – working alongside physical education teachers to illustrate and teach the energy balance concept. We are proud to note that ACFN Foundation’s Healthy Schools Partnership (HSP) has been successful in weaving these pieces together to create a unique educational experience for students and a supportive environment in the school cafeteria. In HSP schools, breakfast and lunch are nurturing, learning labs that allow students to apply their new knowledge on maintaining energy balance. 
 
To address this gap the report suggests expanding the Teach for America program to include nutrition education. If this were to happen, Teach for America could hire nutrition graduates to work in schools with the highest rates of childhood obesity. The nutrition graduates could form a “nutrition corps” that would work with both physical education teachers and foodservice staff to create a complete “energy balance team” that delivers high-quality energy balance education. This model would meet one of the report’s benchmarks of success: increasing the number of school districts that provide healthful school environments and include features such as nutrition education integrated into school programming and lunchroom environments that support healthy eating. 
 
The White House Report also calls for improved physical education in schools. Although the physical education infrastructure exists in today’s schools, it deserves greater attention. Physical education programming is essential to the success of the energy balance education model. The White House Report challenges schools to find ways to increase the quality and frequency of sequential, age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate physical education. ACFN agrees; success is not possible without this key component. 
 
Reducing childhood obesity requires new thinking and proven approaches – as we see in the White House Report and in the integrated energy balance education model – that will help reverse the childhood obesity trend in America within a generation. All we need to do now is roll up our collective sleeves and keeping working, innovating and collaborating.