Public Opinion and Obesity
Understanding and shaping public opinion is vital to enacting effective public policy. In the last ten years, the media have paid increasing attention to obesity, which has in turn caused people to view it as a significant public health problem. For example, in a nationally representative poll taken over the past two years, Americans said that childhood obesity was the number one health problem facing the country, and 68% of adults said that obesity was a “very serious” problem. Americans have also become increasingly supportive of public policies to prevent and combat obesity and change food environments. For example, support for banning the sale of unhealthy foods in school vending machines jumped from 64% in 2001 to 79% in 2004. The Rudd Center is currently engaged in a major initiative, in collaboration with faculty at Yale’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health, to document and shape public opinion about obesity.
For more information on organizations that do regular polling on food policy and obesity:
- Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/
- Pew Center for the People and the Press: http://people-press.org/