OBESITY IN MISSISSIPPI

A project funded by the POWER initiativeIn December 2008, the Healthy Mississippi Summitwas held in downtown Jackson. Governor HaleyBarbour and First Lady Marsha Barbour, along withthe Mississippi Department of Education, hosted theevent. Agency directors shared the stage and voiced theirsupport for cooperative efforts to address childhoodobesity prevention. Over 300 participants from stateagencies, and local communities heard about the manyprograms and initiatives active in Mississippi at boththe state and local levels. At the end of the Summit, allparticipants were provided with a list of policy initiativesand asked to rate their priorities. The list incorporated thehighest rated items from the stakeholders’ meeting as wellas school-based initiatives described at the Summit.A FOCUSED PRIORITYThe resulting ranking of the top 10 policy initiatives from highestpriority to lowest was as follows:• Improve built environments topromote physical activity in communities• Replace fryers with combi-ovens in school kitchens• Increase the number of school nurses in the schools• Support comprehensive fitness testing in schools• Improve state standards for day care centersand youth programs to promote healthy foods• Encourage recipients of publicbenefit programs to purchase healthy foods• Restrict advertising of unhealthy foods to children and/or requirepublic service announcements that offer health messages• Require schools to provide BMI(Body Mass Index) reports to parents• Improve access to supermarkets/produce• Require labeling of restaurant menus and prepared foodsSupporting rationales for the individual POWERpolicy initiatives with case studies demonstratingtheir implementation are on the following pages.17