Our goal is to create strong childhood obesity policy interventions that will reverse the epidemic by 2015.

An investment in change

In 2007, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced it would invest at least $500 million over five years toward its goal of reversing the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. RWJF will focus on improving access to affordable, healthy foods and opportunities for safe physical activity in schools and communities across the country.

As part of this initiative, RWJF asked Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP) to design a National Policy and Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). The network would provide leaders in the childhood obesity prevention field with

• focused legal research,
• model policies,
• fact sheets,
• toolkits,
• training, and
• technical assistance to explain legal issues related to public health.

Initial steps

To better understand the legal and policy concerns of nutrition and physical activity advocates, PHLP first undertook a comprehensive needs assessment, conducting nearly 100 in-depth interviews with prospective stakeholders. Participants included

• community-based advocates,
• health department staff,
• legal scholars,
• research scientists and
• policy-makers.

The needs assessment uncovered a number of challenges that efforts to prevent childhood obesity may face, major lessons on how to move forward, and specific legal and policy strategies that a national resource center could address.

The interviews also reinforced the need for an infrastructure that would foster cross-disciplinary learning—an incubator of sorts, where lawyers, policy-makers, advocates and scientists could “cross-pollinate” to generate new policy ideas. In response, NPLAN incorporated three learning communities into its policy development model. The learning communities focus on marketing to children, childcare and the K-12 environment, and the built environment.

NPLAN Goals and Next Steps

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 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.