Children and adolescents in the United States and in many countries are projected to have shorter life spans than their parents, partly because of the obesity crisis engulfing the developed world. Exposure to electronic media is often implicated in this crisis because media use, including electronic game play, may promote sedentary behavior and…

This report provides updated results from one of the most comprehensive studies of health-related policies and practices in U.S. public middle and high schools to date, which was released in August 2011. The major findings and trends presented in this report describe issues relevant to childhood obesity for four school years, from 2006-07 to…

Objective: To gain opinions from low-income, limited-English-speaking Hispanic and Asian immigrants for formative research in a social marketing campaign. Design: Nineteen questions on obesity prevention-related topics were embedded into a larger random digit-dial survey investigating the effects of language and cultural barriers on health care…

In recent years, scholars have increasingly joined with activists to challenge marketing aimed at children. It is a widely accepted belief that marketers have sold unhealthy foods as well as questionable toys and games, to the detriment of American children. Motivated by declining measures of child well-being, such as heightened obesity rates,…

In examining the childhood obesity epidemic from the perspective of economics, John Cawley looks at both possible causes and possible policy solutions that work through markets. The operation of markets, says Cawley, has contributed to the recent increase in childhood overweight in three main ways. First, the real price of food fell. In…

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Obesity Education Initiative (OEI) convened a two-day meeting to help develop a national public education outreach initiative to help reduce and prevent overweight and obesity in the United States. This Strategy Development Workshop, held on February 17-18, 2004, convened more that 70 public…