The Voices for Healthy Kids and State Legislation to Prevent Childhood Obesity: An Update

Voices for Healthy Kids: a multisectoral collaboration to accelerate policy changes that promote healthy weight for all children and adolescents in the United States

“…The number of childhood obesity bills introduced and enacted increased in the United States between 2013 and 2016. The evidence based advocacy supported by the initiative appears to be greatly associated with the introduction of more state level bills to tackle childhood obesity but not enacted legislation 15 …”

“…The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has funded third party evaluations since the beginning of the initiative to help assess its impact and share lessons learnt. 12 14 15 24 These use various techniques to measure changes in state policy related to the goals of the initiative, examine factors that help or hinder campaigns, and assess the effectiveness of the technical assistance provided. Evaluation results help identify measures of success and improve campaigns and their operational processes such as tracking requests for technical assistance.…”