Tackling Childhood Obesity Under New Management

The Child Growth Foundation welcomes the appointment of Ed Balls to lead the new government Department of Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]. In a surprise move the Department will take the lead responsibility for children's health and child poverty away from the Department of Health [DH] and, significantly, place the battle to tackle child obesity under new management. The move must be an admission that the " joined up government " approach spanning the DH and the Department for Further Education and Skills [now abolished] just wasn't working. It will probably be a week or two before we see exactly what the DCSF child health strategy will be since it is not yet clear which of Mr Balls' new ministerial team will oversee its day-to-day delivery.

Whoever it is, it is crucial that [s]he shouldn't spend the Summer holidaying but should be driving the social marketing strategy that the DH promised months ago would finally solve our current epidemic. The Government has now only 2½ years to achieve its aim to halt the year-on-year rise of obesity in England in children under-11 by 2010 and, if it fails, will have to go to the county admitting yet another target defeat. The Foundation takes no joy whatsoever in the fact that this may be too late to achieve the target anyway since the next qualitative report on childhood obesity due in the Autumn is very likely to show that levels will escalate for many years to come. A bold option that the DCSF might get away with is to shift its target date to get on top of the epidemic by 2015, a date seen as being more realistic by both the World Health Organisation and the European Union.

If the Brown administration is truly to be a government of all the talents, the Foundation trusts that the DCSF will seriously listen to every organisation regardless of political persuasion which constructively suggests ways to improve the early identification rates of children with growth-related disorders and alter the obesogenic society in which we now live to an environment in which everyone can lead and enjoy a healthy lifestyle. The Foundation is such an organisation. We would remind the reader that July 1st 2007 should not only have been lauded as a landmark in the fight to curb smoking but also as a red-letter day in the fight to ban unhealthy foods being promoted to children. The acceptance that the food industry can still continue to target children with less than healthy food, particularly before the 9pm TV watershed, was an illustration of the lack of resolve of the Blair administration. It is a weakness that Mr Balls and company must overcome if they are to make a permanent improvement in children's health.