Farmers Market Coalition

The President’s Task Force on Childhood Obesity announced on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 that it is in search of recommendations on public and private sector actions that could solve the problem of childhood obesity.

The Task Force, which was established by a Presidential Memo in February and includes the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services, focuses its attention on the following four objectives:

1) Ensuring access to healthy, affordable food

2) Increasing physical activity in schools and communities

3) Providing healthier food in schools

4) Empowering parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families

To meet these objectives, the Task Force seeks to detail a coordinated strategy for executive departments and agencies, identifying areas for reform, key benchmarks, research needs, policy proposals, and potential areas of collaboration with nongovernmental actors. Correspondingly, the Task Force is particularly interested in information addressing the following questions:

• What key topics should be addressed in a report on the four objectives?

• For each of these objectives, what are the most important actions that Federal, State, and local government can take? What about private, nonprofit, and other nongovernmental actors?

• What government actions regarding childhood obesity would benefit from cross-agency coordination?

• For each of the four objectives, what strategies will ensure that efforts will reach across diverse geographic areas and socioeconomic groups?

• What goals should be set, and what benchmarks should be used to measure progress toward these goals?

• What are the key unanswered research questions that need to be answered about childhood obesity?

• What important factors should be considered that do not fit in the four objectives?

• What recommendations would help parents reduce the risk that their children will become overweight, and how could the effectiveness of these recommendations be measured?

Anyone is welcome to submit comments or ideas for the Task Force through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. The deadline for comments is March 26. For more information about this call for recommendations, visit the Federal Register at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-5719.pdf