Creating an enabling environment for healthy lifestyles
This article in today’s Science Times is cause for celebration. With Obama administration funding, a handful of local governments are beginning to send health promoters to the front lines of the obesity and diabetes epidemics.
It’s kind of ironic, though, to see the United States beginning to adopt primary health care/prevention approaches that were endorsed in 1978 at the Alma Ata World Health Assembly and put into practice successfully by a number of developing countries over the past half century.
Well, I guess it’s better late than never… and of course, the Republicans will oppose the expansion of this kind of reform tooth and nail.
From a Communication for Development perspective, it’s great to see the article’s emphasis on addressing the drivers of unhealthy life styles (in this case, the multiple factors contributing to poor diet and lack of exercise), rather than just beating people over the head with messages telling them to change their behaviors. “You have to change the drivers,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, “rather than count on people to resist them.”
