Given the severity of the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States, turning the tide is a challenge that requires tremendous vision and coordination. As communities across the nation consider new policies that support physical activity and increased access to healthier foods, legal and policy research and tools will be essential.

By empowering community-based change agents with resources that are legally sound, practical and accessible, NPLAN will play an important role within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s historic and ambitious effort to reverse the obesity epidemic by 2015.

PHLP has provided legal and policy guidance on public health issues for more than a decade. Most notably, it created a legal resource center for the tobacco control movement in California that has been tested and refined over the past 10 years. This experience positioned PHLP to create a similar model for the movement to prevent childhood obesity.