Remarks as Delivered at the Prevention PSA Launch with DreamWorks

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons is a sketch of a very large bathroom sink, perhaps the biggest sink you've ever seen. The tap has been left on and it is overflowing, flooding the floor.

At the base of the sink, a group of men in lab coats are working feverishly with mops and buckets. But ascending the leg of the sink, pulling himself up, hand over hand, was one of the doctors with a real solution in mind: turning off the faucet.

The cartoon, of course, was intended to remind us of what we learned as children: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It is a lesson we need to take clearly to heart in health care.

Epidemics of obesity and related chronic diseases are sweeping the nation at all levels of society. They are contributing to serious health consequences, severely reducing quality of life, and adding to health care costs that are spiraling for all of us.

Until we learn to approach prevention and staying healthy with the same rigor we do with treatment, we're not going to get ahead of these health care problems.

This requires change of self, not just of our health care system.

I'm talking about we have to take better care of ourselves. I'm talking about diet, exercise, and our personal habits.

More than 75 percent of all medical costs result from treatment of chronic diseases. Yet, as you know, many chronic diseases can be prevented and managed. Today, roughly a third of American adults are obese. That's a real problem. Obesity often leads to diabetes, heart ailments, and other conditions.

We are used to thinking about obesity and chronic disease as “adult” problems, but we are quickly passing them on to our children.

Over the past two decades, the number of overweight adolescents tripled. In America today, there are more than 10 million 6-to-19-year-olds who are overweight. And another 10 million children in that age range are at risk of becoming overweight.

Children are now being diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes, formerly known as "adult onset" diabetes.

In fact, one in three Americans born in the year 2000 is likely to develop diabetes in his or her lifetime.

Still, just a quarter of high school students are moderately physically active for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. That's half the recommended 60 minutes a day.

Our trends in chronic disease and obesity are clearly linked to the choices we make when it comes to diet and exercise. We owe it to ourselves to take better care of our health. And we owe it to our children to encourage healthier habits, and to teach them healthy habits now.

This morning, the President and I met with CEOs representing companies in the food and beverage, entertainment, and IT industries. Several of them have joined us here—thank you for being here and the commitment you have made in the way you produce food and market it.

We had a very productive discussion about ways the private sector can help to combat childhood obesity. I appreciate the commitments each has made to promote healthier options in their products and their advertising to children.

HHS has also been working with the Ad Council and DreamWorks Animation to create a series of public service ads, as part of the President's HealthierUS initiative. These PSAs, which you are about to see, feature characters that are popular from the Shrek movies. They promote physical exercise in a way that will appeal to children and to their parents. Starting today, we will see these ads on TV, on the internet, and in print. You can see examples of them around the room today.

We are very grateful to DreamWorks and the Ad Council for producing them. We are also grateful for the airtime stations are donating to run public service ads. That support is a very important part of our strategy to get these messages out to children.

Increasing healthy choices available to children and encouraging them to be active are important steps. I would like to thank all the organizations here today who are participating.

We also need to reach out not just to children, but also to their parents. They can help their children by limiting their time in front of a TV or on a computer, packing healthy snacks for school, and taking time to go to the park, or finding activities that just help them move around, and teach them it's not only fun, it's also important and healthy.

Making a change will mean taking a hard look at our personal habits and committing to making healthier choices for ourselves and our families not just this year, but in the coming years. Together, we have an opportunity to dramatically improve the health, happiness, and well-being of ourselves, our children, and our country as a whole. Let's seize that opportunity today.

Last revised: February 07, 2008