Reducing childhood obesity through advocacy: The American heart association and robert wood johnson foundation childhood obesity advocacy organization

Today, nearly one-third of children and adolescents in the United States are either overweight or obese. To address this health epidemic, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Heart Association launched a $10.3 million collaboration to reverse the nation's childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. This advocacy initiative focuses on changing local and state policies to help children and adolescents eat healthier foods and be more active. The initiative strategy revolves around the creation of policy-area “hubs” focused on specific policy advocacy issue targets that will strengthen and support state and local advocates by advancing evidence-based childhood obesity policy in order to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. The six advocacy target areas include: reducing consumption of sugary beverages; protecting children from unhealthy food and beverage marketing; increasing access to affordable healthy foods; increasing access to parks, playgrounds, walking paths, bike lanes and other opportunities to be physically active; and helping schools and youth-serving programs increase children's physical activity levels. Working with the hubs and other coalition partners, this initiative will be focused on ensuring that a winning strategy is developed and executed with succinct timing; that the tools and technical assistance needed to strategically plan, advance and implement effective public policy campaigns at all levels are developed and provided by experts with winning track records, and that leadership and communication across the infrastructure will build a cohesive movement.