Nowhere is the evidence of the obesity epidemic so compelling as with children, Lavizzo-Mourey said at the March 26 meeting of the Society for Behavioral Medicine in Baltimore. Already 15 percent of American children are obese and that rate is approaching 20 percent.

“Today’s kids are well on the way to becoming more obese and sicker adults,” she said. “They could be the first generation to be less healthy than their parents.”

But something could be done. Obesity may not be a virus or an infectious disease, but it is treatable because human behavior can be changed, she added.

Prevention is the best approach to this threat, Lavizza-Mourey said. Energy inputs and outputs — diet and physical activity — have to be modified. Unfortunately, physical activity has been engineered out of society due to a greater reliance on automobiles and an increasingly sedentary workplace.

“We have to change the energy equation,” she said, noting that public policy should be based on solid science and compelling research.

The foundation has already funded $12.5 million in active living research to build an evidence base and has available another $3 million for research on physical activity policy. The foundation’s next target will be on the energy input side of the equation, funding research on healthy eating.

Change will come only with the creation and adoption of comprehensive programs like those successful in reducing smoking rates, she said. Young people must be involved in that process, not merely seen as passive consumers of anti-obesity rhetoric.

The foundation will convene a summit meeting on obesity in June at Williamsburg, Va., to set an agenda for change.

To read more about the foundation’s obesity programs, go to here.

-- Aaron Levin, Health Behavior News Service