Healthy Future US Blog

There were a number of good insights and promising strategies described in the Healthy Eating, Active Living special supplement of SSIR Summer 2019.    Yet the authors also admitted that child obesity and adult chronic diseases continue to grow. One key weakness of the social determinants of health (SDOH) framework is that there are so many challenging “determinants,” that scarce resources for change can get spread and diluted.   So we end up with good SDOH change anecdotes—while actual state & national health statistics worsen. To maximize impact, especially to reach the tipping point of actually reversing 40+ years of worsening health habits, we need to prioritize.   One highly promising “80/20” (and, yes, SDOH) strategy is through K-12 schools—literally with 20% of the US population, for 13 years, at just the right developmental stage to learn and change.   There are scalable, low cost, school-based strategies that dramatically increase fitness & activity, impro