Dang will be attending graduate school at Colorado State University in the fall to study molecular, cellular and integrative neurosciences. She believes that understanding policy is crucial to the next generation of health care leaders. Dang is attending the Symposium as part of its Symposium University program.
How often do you walk out of your house with your shirt on backwards? Not often (I hope). And if you did, someone would let you know. Yet when you are drinking a 20 oz. bottle of soda with your combo meal from McDonald's, would anyone step in and say "That's a bad choice?" No, because as a society we would consider that rude.
My point: Do we have notions and opinions about health in our communities backwards? We are more worried about a person's apparel and would easily voice our opinion to save a person from embarrassment, but we may never be vocal about health risks that can potentially save a person's life. The solution to this problem is not to call this person out, shouting "You're the root of the obesity epidemic!" but to change the mentality of the community to value the importance of health, making that the norm.
Today's morning session, entitled "The View from the Street" featured epic speakers discussing the hard realities—the battles and triumphs of creating health in their community.
Larry Cohen, founder and executive director of the Prevention Institute, showed the audience an advertisement from KFC, stating "Buy a mega jug of soda for $2.99 and KFC will donate $1 to JDRF." Sounds wonderful, except that JDRF stands for the "Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation." We emphasize the importance of preventative care (which by the way only makes up four percent of current medical expenditures), yet live in a society that does not nurture or support health as much as it should.
Dr. Kelly Brownell, co-founder and director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, furthered the point of why most people don't live healthy lifestyles and are not in a rush to change. What he considers "disastrous defaults" includes the acceptance of bad foods (i.e. deep fried butter), inappropriate portions and food marketing from various industries. The average teen in the United States sees five fast food ads per day. Preschoolers see more than 1,000 ads per year for unhealthy foods. Have you heard of Bunnies or Puffins? These are among the healthiest cereals according to a report by the Yale Rudd Center. But I guarantee most people have heard of Reese's Puffs and Lucky Charms, deemed as the lowest nutritional cereals.
"It is unreasonable to expect people to change their behavior easily when so many forces in the social, cultural and physical environment conspire against such change," quoted Cohen. We need to make health the goal of the majority. It needs to be the default option for everyone—rather than making recommendations about taking care of yourself, change the mentality to a more compulsory concept.
How do we approach this problem? Some say education, but is that enough? The majority know that soda is bad for you, but the average person consumes approximately 50 gallons a year. We need action.
Take the amazing example of Will Allen, the founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc.. This former professional basketball player created the farm and community food center in Milwaukee. He received the "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation by thinking outside of the norms and creating effective urban farming. We need more Will Allen revolutions in the world.
Dr. Brownell had a proposal of taxing one penny per ounce of sugar-sweetened beverages to deter people from drinking empty calories. Doesn't sound like much, but he projected that the tax can decrease consumption of these beverages by 10-23 percent, reduce health care costs by $50 billion over 10 years, and even generate $150 billion in tax revenue for Colorado in 10 years. Do you think this a practical solution?
Thus far, it is not mainstream to be healthy when we have so many influences from industries that advertise otherwise. We need change. Maybe one day it won't be strange to say to someone, "Excuse me ma'am, you're drinking a soda and taking years off of your own life."
Comments