As a longtime health journalist, I was invited to go to the CDC’s conference on obesity prevention and control, The Weight of the Nation, this week in DC. I couldn’t make it, but will, of course, bring you some of the highlights.
At the conference today, the CDC released a study that estimates the medical cost of obesity may be as high as $147 billion a year – about double what it was in 1998. Results show overall, obese people spent $1,429 (42 percent) more for medical care in 2006 than did those at a healthy weight. You can see a list of diseases linked to obesity here.
Researchers also talked about how it’s going to take a community effort to reverse the obesity epidemic rather than an individual one.
What do you think? Is going to “take a village” to change things?
It’s definitely a critical mass thing, which is one of the reasons I blog. People follow the latest “new thing” and I’m hoping if enough people share their successes (as well as our common struggles), more people will jump on the bandwagon.
One thing that struck me as I was reading this is that while the $$ number is shocking, it’s also reflective of the high costs of health care. And I’m sure it’s also somehow linked to income level, as in people at the lower income levels often don’t seek early help for health care.
Oh, why do you make me think about these things?!
(Seriously? Thank you.)
Those numbers are craziness! Let see, I’ll do my part by hiding in the bushes and snagging a McDonald’s bag from a chubby kid and throwing it under a moving car (the bag, not the kid).
Cammy – Don’t think too much!
Yum Yucky – Maybe that’s what they mean by community effort???!
Oh, it’s just a passing thing. It will all be over soon when we wake up from this nightmare. Pass the cheeseburger please.
We (the collective “we”) think we’re saving money by eating cheap, unhealthy food. Or we eat out more because it’s convenient. How economical is it, though, if we spend our later years on medicine and/or in the hospital. And how convenient is it if we have to spend time on bedrest, or in making trips to the pharmacy – when we could be really living our lives?
Does it take a village? I’m not sure…