By Crystal Swann
June 13, 2011

The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the American Beverage Association (ABA) will announce June 19 a new national initiative to award more than $400,000 per year to mayors to support and enhance their childhood obesity prevention programs in America’s cities. The three-year program will also include a national public awareness campaign, and will connect mayors with innovative, cost-effective policy and program strategies to successfully reduce childhood obesity in their cities.

This new partnership represents the Conference of Mayors most significant investment in reducing childhood obesity since launching the “Mayors Healthy Cities Campaign” in 2004. In the public health arena, the Conference of Mayors has identified the reversal of current childhood obesity trends as one of its top national priorities. The statistics paint a disturbing picture – while for generations, life expectancy in the United States has continued to increase, and the childhood obesity epidemic threatens to reverse that trend. Today, more than one-fifth of preschool children are overweight or obese. Being overweight or obese puts children at higher risk for health problems that we normally expect in adults: heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a host of others.

Worse, the childhood obesity epidemic could actually shorten the life span of an entire generation by as much as five years, according to some estimates. This would be the first decline in life expectancy since the government started keeping track more than 100 years ago. The situation is almost unthinkable—for the first time in history, the next generation could have shorter life expectancy than ours.

The 2012 Childhood Obesity Prevention Program is a initiative of the “Mayors’ Healthy Cities Campaign” was launched in the spring of 2004 in response to the nation’s growing obesity epidemic and its relationship to chronic diseases and certain types of cancers. Because regular exercise and healthy eating can alleviate or prevent not only obesity, but chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, the Mayors’ Healthy Cities Campaign focuses on ways that mayors can have a positive impact on the health of their constituents.