Policy Wise

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A recent study seems to indicate that majority of Americans support public policies and government-induced incentives that can potentially reduce adult obesity.

A large majority of Americans say they support changes in public policy to stem the rising tide of obesity among adults, a new survey shows.

“There is a lot of support for employer and health policies aimed at preventing obesity,” said lead researcher Bernard Fuemmeler, an assistant professor in the department of community and family medicine at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.

“This study provides tangible evidence that people support wide-scale policy changes that can affect obesity in the U.S.,” Fuemmeler added.
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The new telephone survey of 1,139 adults found that 85 percent supported tax breaks for employers who made exercise space available to employees.

In addition, 73 percent said they’d support government incentives for companies that reduced the cost of health insurance for employees who had healthy lifestyles and shed extra pounds. Seventy-two percent said they would support government policies requiring insurance companies to cover obesity treatment and prevention programs.

“There is growing public advocacy for these kinds of policy changes,” Fuemmeler said. “There is also advocacy in the research community for large-scale policy changes. With some push, we might be able to get some changes that would help us better address the obesity epidemic in the country.”

Health insurance and other incentives (such as providing subsidized gym membership) are probably a good way to go towards tackling obesity. It will take a while though to figure out the effectiveness of such programs. Also, as the article itself suggests, incentives are no guarantee that employees will take advantage of them:

However, “It’s not clear what will motivate the employees,” Kolasa said.

One problem is misinformation about weight loss. “Most individuals that present for nutrition counseling have significant amounts of misinformation about food and beverages that prevent them from being successful in weight loss or weight management,” Kolasa said.

“Also, people continue to say that it costs more money to eat healthy, when it has been demonstrated time and again you can eat healthy at no greater cost,” Kolasa added.

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