September has been proclaimed by Congress as the first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. In his proclamation, President Obama urges all Americans to take action to meet the national goal of solving the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.

What's the government doing to help solve the problem of childhood obesity?

• Created a Task Force on Childhood Obesity to develop interagency solutions and make recommendations on how to respond to this crisis. The Task Force produced a report containing a comprehensive set of recommendations to address childhood obesity including: providing healthier food in schools, ensuring access to healthy affordable food, increasing opportunities for physical activity, empowering parents and caregivers with better information about making healthy choices, and giving children a healthy start in life.
• Earlier this year, the First Lady announced Let's Move!, an initiative to combat childhood obesity at every stage of a child's life.
• Included a number of tools for fighting childhood obesity in the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, such as: requiring all new health insurance plans to cover both screenings for childhood obesity and counseling on nutrition and sustained weight loss, without charging any out of pocket costs; requiring large restaurant and vending machine operators to provide visible nutritional information about the products they sell; and millions in new funds to implement prevention activities nationwide that support recommendations of the Task Force on Childhood Obesity.

What's The Cooper Institute (CI) doing to help solve the problem of childhood obesity?

• FITNESSGRAM (FG), developed by CI is in the majority of schools in the U.S. and allows the schools to send students and their family individual FG progress reports. The school is able to help children set individual fitness goals.  FG also enables schools to have the conversations with parents, because most parents seem to feel that their children are at a healthy weight when that may not be the case.
• NUTRIGRAM (NG), also developed by CI, will be in schools next year bringing the school, student, and family together in conversation about food choices.
• Healthy Zone Schools are becoming a reality with the help of CI and the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.  In future years, look to see if your child’s school displays the Healthy Zone sign. It will designate schools that have created healthy environments and put healthy practices into the classrooms, lunchroom, and gym.
• The NFL took notice and partnered with The Cooper Institute. Now, and into the future, the NFL Play 60 is the proud sponsor of FG. 

What can you do to help solve the problem of childhood obesity?

• Learning about and engaging in activities that promote healthy eating and greater physical activity by children.
• Talk to your own children about the healthy foods they need to grow and perform.
• Provide whole grains, vegetables, fruits and low-fat or fat-free dairy at every meal - breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
• Take your children grocery shopping and allow them to pick out colorful, healthy foods; then, include them in the cutting/preparation of the foods.
• Expose your children to structured exercise like different sports as well as other ways to be active at home/in the community.
• Eat dinner together and be active as a family - model healthy behaviors.

Share how you or your organization is already contributing to the combat against childhood obesity!