health
Medical group backs obesity education
- Updated: June 20, 2012 - 7:33 PM
The American Medical Association is backing obesity awareness classes, such as a “Lets Move” event, of fifth-graders at Oak Grove Elementary School in Durham, N.C.
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The American Medical Association on Wednesday put its weight behind requiring yearly instruction aimed at preventing obesity for public schoolchildren and teenagers.
The nation's largest physicians group agreed to support legislation that would require classes in causes, consequences and prevention of obesity for first through 12th graders. Doctors will be encouraged to volunteer their time to help with that under the new policy adopted on the final day of the AMA's annual policymaking meeting.
Another new policy adopted said the group supports the idea of using revenue from taxes on sugar-sweetened sodas as one way to help pay for obesity-fighting programs. But the group stopped short of fully endorsing such taxes. Some doctors think soda taxes would disproportionately hurt the poor and disadvantaged. Others said taxes shouldn't be used to force people to make healthful decisions they should be making on their own.
Doctors at the meeting in Chicago shared sobering statistics and personal stories in urging the AMA to sharpen its focus on obesity prevention.
"I can't tell you the number of 40-pound 1-year-olds I see every day," Dr. Melissa Garretson, a Stephensville, Texas pediatrician, told the delegates before the vote. She said requiring obesity education "is a great idea."
The measure was drafted by the AMA's Pennsylvania delegation. It cited data showing that more than 300 million people worldwide are obese and said requiring nutrition education to prevent obesity has never been proposed.
Obesity affects more than one-third of U.S. adults and almost one in five children, or more than 12 million kids. Recent evidence suggests those numbers may have stabilized, but doctors say that's small consolation when so many people are still too fat.
Excess weight is strongly linked with diabetes, heart disease and some cancers, and weight loss of just 5 percent can help improve health, the Pennsylvania doctors' measure said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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