REMARKS BY:
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TOMMY G. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
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PLACE:
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Williamsburg, VA
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DATE:
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June 2, 2004
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Time Obesity Summit
Thank you, Jim, for that kind introduction [Time Managing Editor
Jim Kelly]. I’d like to thank everyone from Time, ABC
News, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for bringing so much
attention to this critical issue.
I’m so pleased to be here at this National Summit with so
many of you who are leaders in the fight to address this health
crisis.
And let’s be clear, friends, we do have a crisis on our
hands. Right now, our country is just too darn fat.
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions.
I know most of you saw the report a few months ago—from a
study coordinated by our Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention—that obesity is on the verge of overtaking tobacco
as the leading preventable cause of death in America. Some
researchers believe that it is already the leading cause.
This is remarkable. America’s poor eating habits and
lack of physical activity are literally killing us. And
they're killing us at record levels. The statistics are
staggering.
If you’ve been feeling the ground beneath your feet getting
lower, perhaps it’s because there are a billion overweight
people walking around on it. A disproportionate number of
them live here in America. In fact, two out of every three of
us are overweight or obese.
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Obesity cost the American economy $117 billion in the year 2000
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About 75 percent of our health care dollars are spent treating
chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and
diabetes. And $75 billion of that treats obesity
alone.
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These chronic illnesses—many of which can be prevented by
healthy lifestyles—cause seven out of every 10 deaths.
Even worse, America’s children are more sedentary and
overweight than ever before. The number of overweight
children has tripled in the past two decades—and
diabetes rates have skyrocketed right along with this
obesity.
That’s a lot of bad news. The good news is that while
the problem is vast, the solution is achievable. I believe we
can turn the tide against obesity in America, and I want to talk
today about my vision for making that happen.
First, we have to continue to work hard to spread the gospel of
personal responsibility. Each of us has to take
responsibility for making the right choices when it comes to diet
and exercise. My Department has taken steps to promote this
attitude—and most important, we’re trying to do it in
creative ways, without inflicting the guilt that turns so many
people off.
From the day I arrived at the Department of Health and Human
Services, I made healthy living and disease prevention our
Department’s cornerstone priority. I put our whole
Department on a diet, and I lost 15 pounds myself.
I began handing out pedometers, to help people walk 10,000 steps a
day. Now they’re a fashion statement. I’ve
given one to each of the Cabinet Secretaries. Don Rumsfeld
wears his religiously, and he and his wife have competitions to see
who can take more steps.
The leading scientists at all of our renowned institutions and
centers have rallied around the cause of prevention, and this has
affected many of our policies. My Department has issued a
“Blueprint for Action” to reduce and prevent chronic
diseases. The Blueprint outlines steps people can take to
help improve their overall health.
Two years ago, I launched the Steps to a Healthier US initiative to
advance President Bush’s goal of helping Americans live
longer, better, and healthier lives. This year, we will award
$44 million to help communities promote disease prevention and
health. And for next year, we have requested $125 million to
support this grant program.
These funds are used for activities ranging from establishing
community walking programs to helping schools, worksites, shopping
malls, senior centers and other community locations establish
exercise, nutrition and smoking cessation programs.
One of the goals of Healthier US is to get cities competing with
each other, trying to one-up each other with their efforts to
promote healthy living. I’d love to see Chicago
competing with Milwaukee for the right to be called America’s
healthiest city. Of course, with their love of beer and
brats, both of these cities have a long way to go. But I think
it’s achievable, and these grants will help motivate this
action.
I’m also pleased to announce that we are releasing today an
additional $4 million, through the Administration on Aging, in
continuing evidenced-based prevention grants. These 18 grants
are going to 11 different states to encourage physical fitness,
nutrition, falls prevention, medication management, chronic disease
self- management, and health disparities. And they reflect
the fact that obesity is a problem that affects all ages, races,
and demographic groups.
The message that permeates these programs—and this is our
most important message, that we cannot stress enough—is that
small steps can make a big difference. We want people to
understand that they don’t need to make drastic changes to
their lifestyles to be more healthy.
We’re not asking anyone to run a marathon, join a gym or give
up eating. We’re talking about small steps—play
outside with your children, snack on fruits and vegetables, take
the stairs instead of the elevator. These small steps really
can make a big difference in our health. For example, losing
just 5 to 7 percent of body weight can prevent or delay
pre-diabetes from progressing to Type 2 diabetes.
One of the ways we are trying to encourage these steps is through a
creative public education and advertising campaign. Our ads
run on TV, radio, and the Internet, in English and in Spanish, and
I think they’re pretty funny.
They show people who find body parts—love handles, double
chins, big bellies—that have been “lost” by
people who are practicing healthier habits. They send
the message that small steps can make a big difference in leading
to healthier lifestyles. And they do so without making people
feel guilty and discouraged.
Let’s take a few minutes to watch these ads, because I think
they’re really innovative.
[play Ad Council “Small Steps” ads]
As you see, these are innovative and creative ways to communicate a
critical message.
Our public service campaign will continue. And I am pleased
to announce today that we will be expanding our public service
campaign with the Ad Council. We will continue to build upon
the Small Steps campaign in the coming year, but we also will be
adding a new advertising campaign targeting children. We want
to begin educating children early on about the importance of being
active and eating healthy. We want to help reinforce the
messages our parents teach their children: eat your
vegetables. Go outside and play. Put down the video
games and play a game of tag. Then later next year, we plan
to freshen the adult campaign with new ads.
When you combined these two Ad Council campaigns with our VERB
campaign, which targets pre-teens, we are getting out targeted
messages to much of our population. We are providing
motivation for our children, their parents and adults to take the
right steps – often small steps – to lead a healthy
life. And we can certainly use the media’s continued
help in getting out these important messages to adults, children
and entire families. We hope you will run these public
service announcements. And we hope you will continue to
report on these very important topics – devoting your covers
and front pages to this important topic.
We’re also taking other steps to educate the public.
At the Food and Drug Administration, we are working to make it
easier for consumer to understand the simple message that calories
in must equal calories out. You cannot lose weight if
you eat more calories than you burn.
FDA is examining how to revise food labels to ensure that consumers
clearly understand how many calories they are consuming.
Accurate, helpful information will allow them to make wise food
choices at home, at supermarkets, and even in restaurants.
Practically, this might mean listing the total number of calories
in a package rather than just in a suggested serving size. Or
it might mean increasing the font size for calories, or including a
percent Daily Value column for total calories. We’re
also considering defining such terms as low-carbohydrate, reduced-
carbohydrate, or carbohydrate-free.
Some overweight or obese people need more help with controlling
their weight than diet and exercise can provide. They need medical
intervention. So we’re revising and reissuing
FDA’s 1996 draft Guidance for the Clinical Evaluation of
Weight-Control Drugs.
We’re also making it easier for individuals to make good
choices by revising the Dietary Guidelines. An Advisory
Committee is investigating the best ways to update this nutrition
guide, and we are looking forward to their report. My
Department and the Department of Agriculture are conducting an
open, transparent process, and our new guidelines and Food Guide
Pyramid will be based on sound science. We expect to issue
new guidelines in early 2005.
We’ve also developed an aggressive new research strategy on
obesity at the National Institutes of Health. This
year, we will spend more than $400 million on obesity-related
research. Because there is no single cause of all human
obesity, we must explore every aspect of prevention and treatment,
including behavioral, cultural, socio-economic, environmental,
physiologic, and genetic factors.
The bottom line is that when it comes to the question of staying
healthy, none of us can be neutral. If we haven't made an
effort to make good choices and develop the right habits, chances
are good that we're practicing the wrong habits.
And the same holds true for companies and organizations. All
of us have the responsibility to encourage healthy behavior in our
own lives and families. And often we have the opportunity to
encourage healthy behavior among our customers and employees
Let’s look at the food industry, for example. Companies
that produce and market food often affect how we think about food
and what kinds and quantities of food we eat.
Early in my time here at HHS, I sat down with many leaders from the
food industry, including fast food companies, to talk about the
need for them to do more—to include a greater variety of
healthier menu items, to offer more nutritional information, and to
take more steps to encourage healthy living. I’ve
continued to meet with food companies throughout my time
here—as well as insurance companies—and I think they
would agree that I haven't been shy about it.
And I’ll be honest, at first I met some resistance. But
over the past year, we have seen many changes demonstrating that
our message is resonating in boardrooms throughout the food
industry. We sounded the alarm, and the free market is
responding. More companies are realizing that healthy living
and prevention programs are not only compassionate; they are also
good business practices. And they’re taking some
encouraging steps.
Let me give you a few examples.
Last year, Kraft Foods announced it is eliminating all marketing in
schools and developing guidelines for all advertising and marketing
practices, especially for children. Kraft is also working to
make its existing product line healthier.
I also met with the leaders of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. And I
am pleased to tell you that Coke is reaffirming its policy against
marketing soft drinks to children under 12 and is also putting
nutritional information on vending machines in schools.
Pepsi's "better for you" and "good for you"
products account for 43% of its sales. In addition, they are
producing their Frito Lay salty snack foods with no hydrogenated
oils - that is, trans fats. Both Pepsi and Coke are adding
healthier beverage choices to their vending machines.
Unilever is eliminating trans fatty acids from its margarine.
And together, Coke and Kraft Foods, along with the Boys and Girls
Clubs of America, have announced a new initiative, Triple-Play, to
help young people to make informed decisions about their physical,
mental, and social well-being. This initiative is the first
of its kind developed in collaboration with my Department.
Even McDonald's just introduced a new Balanced Lifestyles
Platform, including: their first adult Happy Meal,new
Happy Meal choices, and new McDonald’s Menu choice ordering
options. Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, and others
are taking similar steps. This is good and I’d like to
see all of them do even more.
But it’s not just food companies that can make a
difference. Every employer—profit, nonprofit,
faith-based, or governmental, can make a difference.
Whenever I talk to employers or insurers or food producers, I tell
them, if you haven't made an effort to make your policies
consistent with healthy habits, chances are you're leading
people down the wrong path. And this path can be an expensive
one.
Most corporations, as you know, offer their employees part of their
compensation in the form of cash, and part in the form of a health
insurance premium. And if you talk to senior management of
corporations in almost any industry about their biggest concerns,
as I have, you hear over and over about rising health care
costs. The more expensive health care is, the harder it is to
compete with foreign competitors.
Preventable chronic diseases contribute to rising costs.
That's why employer spending on prevention is a wise investment
that pays off. It pays off in lower health care
expenses. It pays off in lower absenteeism and higher
productivity. And I encourage all employers to make this
investment so they can reap big returns for a long time.
Some organizations think that if they've complied with laws and
regulations and survived for another year, they're doing all
they need to do. But that’s not good enough. More
companies need to realize the opportunity they have to take an
active role in informing their employees and motivating them to
make healthy choices .
They also need to help make more lifesaving services available for
their employees. Many nutrition and physical activity
programs, mammography screenings, and even simple blood pressure
checks - are extremely cost effective.
And we at HHS are leading by example. Medicare is the
Nation’s largest provider of health insurance, affecting more
than 40 million seniors and people with disabilities. With
this year’s Medicare Modernization Act, I pushed to include
more preventive benefits in Medicare. And starting in January
2005, seniors entering Medicare will be offered a complete,
“Welcome To Medicare” physical, that will include
appropriate screenings and referrals to disease management
programs. In addition, all people on Medicare will be covered
for blood tests that can diagnose heart diseases. And those
at high risk for diabetes will be covered for blood sugar screening
tests.
It makes sense to spend money on preventive medicine.
Preventive care enables doctors and patients to diagnose and treat
health problems earlier, changing our health care system from a
focus on treating disease to a focus on preventing disease.
This shift in thinking will pay off not only in lower healthcare
expenses, but also in better quality of life for all Americans.
Many organizations in different industries have developed creative
ways to keep their workers and their families healthy. Last
year, I launched the Innovation in Prevention Awards to recognize
these creative activities and encourage other companies to
duplicate those efforts.
These awards were modeled after the Malcolm Baldridge quality
awards, presented by the Department of Commerce. We hope they
continue organizations to do the right thing on prevention,
especially on preventing obesity.
So we’re encouraging healthy behaviors with individuals, with
the food industry, with companies and non-profit
organizations. In short, we have sounded the alarm, and good
things are happening. People are springing into action and
organizations are taking positive steps to address this
problem. This Summit is a reflection of this positive
attention.
I’m convinced that we are approaching the tipping point on
obesity. This is an incredibly hopeful moment when we can
truly change America’s outlook on obesity. By engaging
every sector of our society—the government, corporations,
local organizations, communities, and families—we can apply
the well-placed lever needed to change the way Americans look at
healthy living and change behaviors. When people behave
differently, then thatbehavior can ripple outward until a critical
mass or tipping point is reached, when we will be on our way to
tackling obesity in America.
Let’s do everything we can to enact small steps that will
help build the momentum necessary to reach this tipping
point. Unlike a fad diet that’s a short run fix, we
have to make changes to tackle obesity that will last a
lifetime.
All of you are at this conference because you know how to make
things happen. You work with, or for, all levels of the
government. You work in the free market. You work with
health centers, health departments, and hospitals. And all of
you deal with employers.
My challenge to each of you is to find a way—not just one
way, several ways—to spread the message of healthy living to
the people in your state. Your employer, your neighborhood,
your health plan, your church, your grocer, your favorite
restaurant, and your own family—there are countless
opportunities for each for each of us to encourage disease
prevention and healthy living in our own lives.
And let’s keep the dialogue going—we should have a
national summit on obesity every year, so this issue stays on our
radar screen until it’s not a problem anymore.
And when it’s not a problem anymore, may it be that people
look back at 2004 as the year when the tide started to turn on
obesity. Let’s work together to make this happen.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Last Revised: June 14, 2004
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