While childhood obesity remains a problem in the US, much progress has been made to address the epidemic over the past 20 years. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently published its 2025 State of Childhood Obesity Report to reflect on the national movement to address childhood obesity and its many accomplishments and lessons learned over time. “Our work together has always been grounded in a simple belief: that every child should be able to grow up healthy, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money their family has,” said Jamie Bussel, RWJF senior officer. Let’s dive deeper into this report and how it can shape efforts to address childhood obesity.
1. Major Commitments Require Vision, Staying Power
The RWJF report describes the skyrocketing ...
Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, leader of Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio, was invited to discuss childhood obesity in Latinos by Noticias Telemundo and the Telemundo network. Ramirez’s appearance was part of a one-hour special described as a critical path for creating a society in which all children can thrive, according to Telemundo. The segment focuses on a variety of issues, such as education, healthcare, and nutrition, in children from different backgrounds. Topics included in the special ranged from children's access to affordable and nutritious foods to the mental health of high school students. The program streamed live on the Noticias Telemundo Ahora streaming channel and Noticias Telemundo’s social and digital platforms: NoticiasTelemundo.com, the ...
Childhood obesity is not only common for U.S. children, it’s a global epidemic. How can communities address this issue? A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Meeting the Moment: Learning From Leaders at the Forefront of Change, asked community leaders and researchers to share their experiences in hopes of better understanding and preventing childhood obesity. “It is you who get out there every day and innovate, renovate, and motivate the field to keep going, keep trying, keep striving,” said Jamie Bussel, senior program officer for the RWJF. Let’s explore four key areas community leaders can eliminate childhood obesity!
1. Improve Health Data
Accurate health data is important. For instance, we know Latino adults have higher obesity rates ...
In the last few years, childhood obesity has become a global epidemic. The effort to change individual choices – like diet and physical activity – hasn’t solved the problem, and also contributes to weight discrimination. That is why we need to use cultural insights, nutritional science, and a systemic focus to improve child health, according to a new report from the Vanderbilt University Cultural Context of Health and Wellbeing Initiative. “What we label ‘obesity’ is produced by interrelated systems in which human biology interacts with environments, social norms, economic structures, and historical legacies,” according to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation blog post about the report, Reframing Childhood Obesity: Cultural Insights on Nutrition, Weight and Food ...
Latinos suffer from toxic pollution in the air at higher rates than their white peers, and it can lead to many harmful side effects. University of Colorado Boulder researchers just added another side effect to that list: Childhood obesity in those whose mothers were exposed to air pollution during pregnancy. Study authors say their findings reveal air pollution’s disproportionate impact on communities of color — the same communities that suffer a lack of access to healthy food and barriers to safe places for physical activity, which contribute to America’s obesity epidemic. “Higher rates of obesity among certain groups in our society are not simply a byproduct of personal choices like exercise and calories in, calories out. It’s more complicated than that,” said ...
When David Miskie graduated from UC Berkeley, he wasn’t planning on starting a cereal company. He actually worked for a few years in consulting, private equity, and investment banking. But after working on consumer products, Miskie, his dad, and his best friend Matt Teichman had an idea – What if we could create a product that everyone loves and make it healthier and better for you? That’s how San Franola Cereals & Snacks was born. Ten years later, San Franola is focused on distributing high quality, whole-food cereals to public schools. They’ve even expanded their labels to include Spanish, so that Spanish-speaking, Latino families can know what healthy ingredients are in their cereal. While keeping up with consumer demand and adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic ...
Latino and all kids could have a higher risk for obesity based on the mere air they breathe. A past study placed pregnant lab rats into two different chambers: one with polluted air from Beijing and one with filtered air. Parent and offspring rats in the first chamber gained more weight than the other rats. They were also more likely to have cardiorespiratory and metabolic dysfunctions. Junfeng “Jim” Zhang, professor of global and environmental health at Duke University, wants to find out if this same risk applies to humans. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has awarded Zhang a $2 million grant to study the effects of prenatal and early-life exposure to air pollution. He will examine how birthweight and early childhood growth—two ...
Latino kids have higher childhood obesity rates than their peers at nearly all age groups, according to a new report. For example, the newest data show Latino kids ages 10-17 have higher obesity rates (19%) than their white (11.8%) and Asian (7.3%) peers. They also have higher rates than the nation (15.3%), but lower rates than black kids (22.2%). The new stats are part of a bigger report, the State of Childhood Obesity: Helping All Children Grow up Healthy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). It highlights big data on childhood obesity, with policies and stories to drive change. “These new data show that this challenge touches the lives of far too many children in this country, and that Black and Hispanic youth are still at greater risk than their White and Asian ...
One in five children struggles with obesity in America today. Worse, this trend impacts over 25% of Latino kids, which is more than their white and black peers, according to Trust for America’s Health’s newest State of Obesity report. In an effort to combat those numbers, the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) recently released its Measures Registry, Measure Registry User Guides, and Measures Registry Learning Modules platform. “NCCOR’s goal in introducing these Learning Modules is to provide a useful resource for those in the field,” the group states in a recent press release. “The Modules highlight key concepts…making it easier to understand measurement issues in the four major domains of the Measures Registry: individual diet, food ...
