A Framework to Inform Obesity Prevention Decision Making

The obesity epidemic poses major challenges for policy makers, public health professionals, and other decision makers. When decisive action is taken to address this epidemic they need evidence to explain why the actions are needed and to help them determine what actions to take and how to go about them. The Institute of Medicine's Bridging the Evidence Gap in Obesity Prevention: A Framework to Inform Decision Making, which was funded by Kaiser Permanente, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides readers with a practical, action-oriented framework to guide the use of evidence in decision making about obesity prevention policies and programs and the generation of new and relevant evidence. Dr. Kumanyika will discuss the main audiences for the report; the key questions the committee sought to answer; the committee's findings after reviewing and analyzing the existing evidence base on community, environmental, and policy-based initiatives; and how those findings helped to inspire the development and implementation of key innovations in thinking about, using, and developing evidence. She will also talk about the role of diverse stakeholders—funders, research institutions, journal editors, and professional organizations—in assisting decision makers and researchers to find and use the best available evidence and generate new evidence using the proposed framework.