Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Sixty-Six Percent, Natalie Abruzzo

Capstones

The Sixty-Six Percent represent the percentage of women in the U.S. who are overweight. They are regarded as full-figured or “plus” size in the world of women’s apparel. Even though more than half of American women wear a “plus” size - size 14 and up - designs for these women account for a fraction of women’s apparel - Only 37% of women's wear is plus-size.

The Sixty-Six Percent is coming at an important time in a broader conversation about de-stigmatizing what it means to be a plus-size woman in America. Fat shaming has become taboo and mainstream media as well …

Mobilisation Of Public Support For Policy Actions To Prevent Obesity, Terry T-K Huang, John H. Cawley, Marice Ashe, Sergio Costa, Leah M. Frerichs, Lindsey Zwicker, Juan A. Rivera, David Levy, Ross A. Hammond, Estelle V. Lambert, Shiriki K. Kumanyika

Publications and Research

Public mobilisation is needed to enact obesity prevention policies and to mitigate backlash against their implementation. However, current approaches in public health focus primarily on dialogue between public health professionals and political leaders. Strategies to increase popular demand for obesity prevention policies include refining and streamlining public information, identifying effective frames for each population, enhancing media advocacy, building citizen protest and engagement, and developing a receptive political environment with change agents embedded across organisations and sectors. Long-term support and investment in collaboration among diverse stakeholders to create shared value is also important. Each actor in an expanded coalition for obesity …

What The Obesity Prevention Field Can Learn From The Gay Marriage Movement, Sergio Costa, Emily Ferris, Terry T-K Huang

Publications and Research

In the US, two-thirds of adults and one-third of children continue to be affected by overweight or obesity despite two decades and billions of dollars' spent in public health efforts. In the last decade, public health has stepped up its call for greater emphasis on environmental and policy interventions, including active designs in urban planning and restrictions on food marketing to children, to incentivize healthy behaviors and disincentivize less healthy ones. However, there has been little success in policy change to prevent obesity. Voters in Berkeley, CA recently passed a one-cent-per-ounce soda tax, but a similar measure was defeated by …

Patchy Progress On Obesity Prevention: Emerging Exemplars, Entrenched Barriers, And New Thinking, Christina A. Roberto, Boyd Swinburn, Corinna Hawkes, Terry T-K Huang, Sergio Costa, Marice Ashe, Lindsey Zwicker, John H. Cawley, Kelly D. Brownell

Publications and Research

Although there have been positive pockets of change, no country has yet turned around its obesity epidemic. Preventing an increase in obesity prevalence will require urgent actions from government as well as a broader spectrum of stakeholders than previously emphasized. In this paper, we review a number of regulatory and non-regulatory actions taken around the world to address obesity and discuss some of the reasons for the patchy progress. In addition, we preview the papers in this Lancet series, which each identify priority actions on key obesity issues and challenge some of the entrenched dichotomies that present obesity and its …