Remarks as Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the National Park Hospitality Association

Good morning. Thank you for that warm introduction.

I don’t know if you all know what my role is at HHS, but as Deputy Secretary, I oversee huge agencies like CDC, NIH, CMS, AHRQ, and FDA. I try to make sure these agencies are not at cross purposes, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of opportunity for that. It’s like the joke about the NIH and FDA scientists talking over coffee. The NIH scientist bragged that he had just discovered a drug that would confer immortality. The FDA scientist shook his head and said that finding out if it actually works would take forever.

And though that’s a joke, it reflects a far too frequent reality: that government can be effective in making decisions that should be left to individuals, families, and consumers. That attitude has predictable results.

So I’m delighted to have the chance to talk with people who guide and influence the lives of the millions of people who visit our National Parks every year.

In this day and age, far too many are cut off from the natural world. And when we don’t understand how nature works, it’s no wonder that we lose sight of how our own bodies work. A recent study found that kids between 8 and 18 consume electronic media for a whopping 6 ½ hours a day. For some kids, that’s more time each day in front of the TV screen or computer than in bed. That’s just not healthy.

I recently came across a study that found that 3 to 12 year olds who spend more time outdoors are likely to be more physically active. Thinking that seemed a little too obvious, I Googled the study to find out what I was missing. And as it turns out, there are many studies linking the two. I guess it’s a pretty safe research subject if you’re a scientist who doesn’t deal with disappointment particularly well.

Fortunately, there are people like you who work to ensure that some of the most spectacular parts of America’s nature — the National Parks — remain pristine, accessible, and inviting.

I’ve visited National Parks across all corners of America. And as I worked on my Ph.D. in American history, I realized that it’s the National Parks that truly bring history to life. I imagined the sacrifices of Pearl Harbor’s sailors as I peered into the calm waters of the USS Arizona Memorial. I understood the pioneer spirit that created America as I shouted across the Grand Canyon. And I realized the enormity of war as I walked across the killing fields of Gettysburg.

To help the next generation of Americans understand this, just a few weeks ago, President Bush launched a new initiative, called Picturing America. Through Picturing America, the National Endowment for the Humanities and HHS’s Administration for Children and Families are working to educate children on the great people, places, and moments in our history — like the National Parks — using American art that depicts them. These images will spread across classrooms and Head Start centers around the country. I hope they will inspire many children to venture into our parks and the outdoors to discover the inspiration behind the art for themselves.

The National Parks truly capture all the facets of what America is: its beauty, its history, and its culture.

So I’m delighted that you’ve gathered together to discuss how the National Parks can help solve one of the biggest problems in America today: the health consequences of sedentary lifestyles.

Every single one of us has the opportunity to be among the healthiest people that have ever lived — despite the bacon we may have for breakfast or the fast food we may eat for dinner.

It’s because we are living at an extraordinary time in medical science. We have access to better medicine, better science, and more preventive therapies than anyone at anytime in history. We don’t have to worry about diseases that used to be devastatingly common, like typhoid or polio. Infections can be cured. Injuries can be mended. Eventually, science will likely even advance to the point where treatments can be tailored to an individual’s basic genetic makeup.

Medical advances can help, but good health isn’t always up to others. Health care starts with self care. You and I have a personal responsibility to care for our own health, and that requires work and commitment.

Unfortunately, far too many people aren’t willing to put in that work. As a result, largely preventable chronic diseases have replaced infectious diseases as major killers. Chronic diseases cause 7 out of every 10 deaths each year. They also consume more than a trillion dollars every year. That’s three out of every four dollars we spend on health care. Smoking, just one cause of so many chronic diseases, costs our economy hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of years of potential life every year.

While the trends are troubling, we can stop them. We can even reverse them. For example, CDC recently announced that after decades of rising, adult levels of obesity have leveled off.

Now, good health is not something that government can mandate. People must choose to adopt healthy behaviors on their own. What government can do is encourage them to make the right choices and give them the knowledge and tools to do so.

It’s important for us to keep that in mind as we help people make healthy choices.

President Bush appreciates the need for healthy choices. He’s always set a strong personal example for the country by being fit himself. So does Secretary Leavitt, in fact. I actually run into him every now and then at the gym.

But President Bush and Secretary Leavitt do more than set a good example. They also set good policy.

Six years ago, President Bush presented a vision of a HealthierU.S. and urged Americans to be physically active, eat a nutritious diet, get recommended preventive screens and reduce risky behaviors. Our whole Department responded to the President’s call, and we’ve been working to invest in research and programs to prevent disease and promote health. A big part of this is promoting regular physical activity.

For example, to help quantify the importance of physical activity, we’re in the process of developing the first Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. 

And in just a few days, on March 20^th, the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports will launch the National President’s Challenge. The National President’s Challenge is a program that calls all Americans for to exercise for thirty minutes a day, five days a week, for six weeks — from March 20 through May 15. As people have seen in the program’s previous years, it’s an effective way to spur our increasingly sedentary society to healthy activities.

Exercising for just thirty minutes a day has been shown to be very good for you. It prevents a host of chronic diseases — like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and even some cancers.

I’d like to invite all of you to join me in rising to the National President’s Challenge — and to encourage your patrons to rise to the challenge as well. Everyone can register at presidentschallenge.org. The challenge logs over 100 activities, including many outdoor and nature-based ones — activities that people can do on trails, in parks, on beaches, or in the mountains. So you might encourage people who visit the National Parks to take a great outdoors challenge.

And because I think most people would enjoy walking in outside one of your parks far more than they would walking on a treadmill, we recently issued a Call to Activity that highlights the scientifically established relationships between health and physical activity, especially in the outdoors. We’re using this information to encourage land management agencies to help ensure that kids have enough opportunities to get outside and actively play.

We are also doing a great deal to help promote healthy habits among children.

A hundred years ago, about the only thing a child could do sitting still was read or draw or watch the grass grow. Then came radio. Then television. Then video games. Now we have the Internet.

Over the same time, we’ve seen a dramatic change in American eating habits. When you and I were kids, we ate most of our meals at home. Our meals had lots of vegetables, and our parents made sure we ate them — or at least they tried to.

Nowadays, kids eat out more, on their own and with their parents. They eat a lot of fast food and junk food. And they wash it all down with soft drinks.

The fast food industry offers some of our biggest challenges in promoting health lifestyles. Now, I know we’re not the ones who have had some problems with the fast food industry.

On April 1, 1996, Americans opened up their newspapers to find that the Liberty Bell had been purchased by Taco Bell. Americans were outraged and bombarded the National Park Service in Philadelphia to find out if the bell had really been sold.

An April Fool’s joke that people took seriously was our generation's equivalent of the War of the Worlds Martian invasion hoax.

But it showed how seriously people take the National Parks — and, perhaps, their health.

And over the past 20 years, thanks to all that junk food along with poor exercise habits, overweight and obesity among children and adolescents has increased from 11 percent to 16 percent. Ten million children are overweight. As a result, kids are developing diseases like high blood pressure, asthma, sleep apnea, and Type 2 diabetes.

To combat these troubling trends, Admiral Galson, our Acting Surgeon General, recently launched a Childhood Overweight and Obesity Prevention Initiative. The initiative consists of six programs that give people the right knowledge, the right tools, and the right encouragement to stop childhood overweight and obesity:

• The first part is the National President’s Challenge, which I’ve already discussed.
• The National Institutes of Health’s We Can! program — which assists communities in their efforts to encourage their children to maintain a healthy weight.
• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s School Health Programs to Prevent Obesity and Overweight — which helps schools reshape social and physical environments to promote healthy lifestyles.
• The Food and Drug Administration’s Using Nutrition Facts Labels to Make Healthy Food Choices — which uses entertaining, targeted advertising to help children and adults understand food labels.
• The Indian Health Service’s Together Raising Awareness for Indian Life — which helps tribal children and youth make healthy lifestyle choices.
• And the Administration for Children and Families is implementing its new Head Start Playground Initiative — a grant program to help Head Start programs develop community playgrounds. I live in the suburbs now, where playgrounds are everywhere. But I used to live in New York City. As anyone else here who’s lived in an urban environment like New York knows, playgrounds are very rare in dense cities. Through this new program, we’re enabling Head Start to establish community playgrounds where children need them the most.

The common theme across the Surgeon General’s Childhood Overweight and Obesity Prevention Initiative is how we’re engaging those most able to influence children’s eating and activity habits. We’re reaching out to parents, caregivers, schools, and community leaders. We’re offering them the help they need to encourage their families, friends, and communities to make smart choices.

Like all chronic diseases, childhood overweight and obesity can have deadly consequences. Preventing them is a challenge that we’ll face for years to come. But prevention just makes sense. It leads to a better quality of life. It saves money at a time when health care costs just keep rising.

Some of you are already doing a great deal to promote health. For example, some concessioners are mapping and marking trails, and then rewarding those who take advantage of them with patches. Other concessioners are utilizing new technologies to foster more enjoyable activities — like podcasts people can listen to while walking along D.C.’s Chesapeake and Ohio Canal or while biking in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

We have many ideas for more work that you, your parks, and your communities can continue to do to help.

• Work with other businesses around parks and other public lands to establish safe and fun outdoor activities.
• Offer your patrons activity-friendly environments like accessible playgrounds and roads that have sidewalks and crosswalks.
• Encourage parents and children to explore your parks on bikes and by foot, rather than bottled away in their cars.
• Foster outdoor nature-based programs that teach children about their natural surroundings.
• Encourage park visitors to volunteer for a trail, park, river, or roadside clean-up day — because research has shown that people who spend time volunteering in conservation activities are twice as likely to be at least minimally physically active.
• Partner with other park communities and work to expand close-to-home outdoor recreation activities — like trails that link people’s homes with schools, parks, and shopping.

President Teddy Roosevelt said that “It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one’s sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature.”

Exploring and enjoying the natural world adds not just to one’s happiness, but to one’s health.

So I sincerely appreciate your enthusiasm for spreading the message of good health to all those who step into the great outdoors. With your commitment and creativity, we will build a healthier America.

If we keep working to make a difference, decades from now — when our children are happy and healthy — our work now will be seen as one of the great public health success stories. Together we can get it done. Thanks.