Moreover, families with children purchased 66 fewer calories per day per person from HWCF brands, a meaningful amount in children’s diets. To validate the HWCF commitment, RWJF funded an independent external evaluation that ultimately found that the HWCF exceeded their commitment and reduced 6.4 trillion calories from their products. The HWCF committed to reduce the caloric content of their products by 1.5 trillion calories by 2015. The commitment was the product of discussions between industry, the White House, RWJF and PHA, and was formalized with PHA on May 17, 2010. PHA’s first commitment was with the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), which at the time consisted of 16 of the largest food and beverage companies in the USA. PHA’s board and Founders Committee provided significant expertise on issues related to childhood obesity, and the organization was well positioned to play an independent, non-partisan convener role in facilitating commitments across the private sector. On April 8, 2010, the Board met to approve the appointment of Larry Kocot as interim president and CEO of PHA, the application for Section 501 (c)(3) status and consider a draft strategic plan and commitment process for PHA. On April 1, 2010, the First Lady participated in a conference call with the press to announce that she had agreed to be the honorary chair of the Partnership, and that Mayor Cory Booker and Senator Bill Frist would serve as honorary co-chairs. These foundations and organizations had already worked together for several years to address the challenge of obesity. Members of the Committee included the leaders of The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, Nemours, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and W.K. In addition, on that date, the board appointed a Founders Committee to serve in an advisory capacity to the Board of Directors. PHA was incorporated on January 13, 2010, and its board of directors was seated on March 23, 2010. President Barack Obama kicked off the launch by signing a Presidential Memorandum creating a White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, with a mandate to develop a national action plan within 90 days to maximize federal resources and set concrete benchmarks towards the first lady’s national goal. This launch by the First Lady also included the announcement of a new independent foundation, The Partnership for a Healthier America, to “accelerate existing efforts addressing childhood obesity and facilitate new commitments towards the national goal of solving childhood obesity within a generation”. Creation of PHA and Early WorkĪs shown in Table 1, The Let’s Move! initiative was formally launched on February 9, 2010. To meet these needs, the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) was created. Additionally, these discussions acknowledged that ending our nation’s childhood obesity crisis required a long-term “generational” strategy and therefore needed an organization that would exist beyond the timeframe of the Administration to continue efforts initiated by Mrs. In late 2009, discussions between a number of organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), AHG and the White House, led to the identification of a need for a national organization that could drive voluntary changes by business to address childhood obesity with public-private partnerships, and hold companies accountable to implement those changes. The Let’s Move! initiative would include a broad set of activities one strategy included work with industry. In 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama was considering a major initiative to battle childhood obesity. When the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association founded the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (AHG) in 2005, two of their four fundamental “pillars” were voluntary agreement approaches with food and beverage companies and with health insurers. Private-public partnerships were forming to solve some of the most critical global public health issues, and both the World Bank and World Health Organization promoted these approaches. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, voluntary agreements emerged as a promising strategy to engage companies around health issues.
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