Posts Tagged ‘public health’

Colon Cancer and Obesity in Young Persons

March 21, 2023 — Both colon cancer and obesity are rising in young people. In fact, a new report in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians suggests colorectal cancer is on the way to becoming the deadliest cancer for people under 50. While colon cancer death rates are dropping for older persons, they are headed in the opposite direction […]

Letting Pregnant Women Die in America

March 17, 2023 — Politicians, activists, and courts are busy fighting about when and whether to permit a woman to have an abortion. But while that tussle continues, very little energy goes into the problem of an extraordinary number of pregnant women who die in America. A new report from the CDC tells us that maternal death rates soared […]

Surging Diabetes and Obesity in Young Persons

March 6, 2023 — For the health of the U.S. population, this is a bad sign. While healthcare has done well to bringing down the prevalence of high cholesterol in young persons, diabetes and obesity are surging. Hypertension? It’s in between – neither rising nor falling in persons 20 to 44 over the timespan from 2009 to 2020. These […]

OCW2023: The End of Obesity? Not Exactly

March 3, 2023 — An interesting collision of stories is playing out in the media today. It comes at the end of Obesity Care Week and on the eve of World Obesity Day. On one hand, the Economist proclaims that “new drugs could spell an end to the world’s obesity epidemic.” On the other, hand the World Obesity Federation […]

Is Better School Nutrition Helping with Obesity?

February 16, 2023 — Among folks concerned with obesity, nutrition, and health for kids, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) is a bright spot in the list of accomplishments on school nutrition. But until now, there was little evidence that this or anything else that fell under the umbrella of Let’s Move! had done much to move the needle […]

Are Healthy Choices Possible Without Healthy Systems?

February 12, 2023 — Strategies for obesity prevention are in the midst of a great shift in emphasis – from healthy choices to healthy systems. For decades now, public health efforts, in one way or another, have had their roots in promoting better choices. It started with efforts to educate the public to eat in more healthful ways and […]

Take the Stairs for a Longer Life?

December 9, 2022 — We have four levels in our home – three sets of stairs to climb. So this new study in Nature Medicine yesterday definitely has our attention. Digging into observational activity monitor data from the UK Biobank, Emmanuel Stamatakis and colleagues from all over the world found that short bursts of vigorous activity – like quickly […]

Killing People Who Are Physically Active

November 30, 2022 — Some of the questions we encounter here come with a lot of ambiguity, but this is not one of them. The U.S. is killing more people who are physically active – pedestrians and cyclists – than any other wealthy country. Clearly, this is not good. Without a doubt, this gives the U.S. a failing grade […]

Ineffective Obesity Policies Anchored to Stigma

November 29, 2022 — Stigma serves as an anchor to policy for reducing obesity in Mexico and it renders those policies ineffective. That’s the view James René Jolin, Lauren Kim, Verónica Vázquez-Velázquez, and Fatima Cody Stanford eloquently present in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology this week. They write: “Recalibrating the prevailing approach to obesity is essential to counteract the stigma […]

Desired Behavior versus Health Improvement

November 27, 2022 — A new systematic review prompts us to wonder once again, what is the point of public health interventions targeting obesity? Is it to nudge people toward desired behavior or is it health improvement? Sandrine Lioret and colleagues recently published a systematic review of efforts to improve behaviors or prevent obesity in children during their first […]