The challenge
Childhood obesity is a serious public health epidemic. During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, increasing more than four times among children ages 6 to 11. Today, more than a third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. That’s more than 23 million kids and teenagers. If we don’t act to reverse this alarming trend, we’re in danger of raising the first generation of American children who will live sicker and die younger than the generation before them.
Preventing obesity during childhood is critical, because habits that last into adulthood frequently are formed during youth:
- Research shows that obese adolescents have up to an 80 percent chance of becoming obese adults. Overweight and obese children are at higher risk for a host of serious illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, asthma and certain types of cancer.
- Children already are being diagnosed with health problems that previously were considered to be “adult” illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
- Obesity also poses a tremendous financial threat to our economy and our health care system. It’s estimated that the obesity epidemic costs our nation $117 billion per year in direct medical expenses and indirect costs, including lost productivity. Childhood obesity alone carries a huge price tag—up to $14 billion per year in direct health care costs.
How did we get to this point? There’s a simple explanation for the childhood obesity epidemic: our children are consuming far more calories than they burn. Today’s obese teenagers consume between 700 and 1,000 more calories per day than what’s needed for the growth, physical activity and body function of a normal-weight teen. Over the course of 10 years, that “energy gap” is enough to pack an average of 58 extra pounds on an obese adolescent.
As a society, we’ve dramatically altered the way we live, eat, work and play— creating an environment that fuels the obesity epidemic:
- On average, today’s kids spend more than four hours per day using electronic media, including television, DVDs and video games.
- A generation ago, approximately half of all school-age children walked or biked to school. Today, nearly nine out of 10 kids are driven to school. And once they get there, there aren’t many opportunities for exercise— fewer than 4 percent of elementary schools provide daily physical education.
- At the same time, children are eating more unhealthy foods in ever-larger sizes. In recent decades, the typical calorie content of menu items like french fries and sodas has increased approximately 50 percent. Children consume these high-calorie, low-nutrient foods not only in restaurants, but also in their homes and schools.
- In communities hardest hit by obesity, families don’t have the opportunities they need to make healthy choices. They don’t have grocery stores that stock affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. There aren’t enough safe places for kids to play or programs to help them be physically active every day. To reverse the childhood obesity epidemic, we must remove these barriers by creating policies and environments that provide families with better access to healthy choices.
RWJF is committed to reversing the epidemic by 2015. Learn more about our strategy.
Learn more about our strategy and the issues we are seeking to address in this area: