LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas is the eighth most obese state in the nation, up from its 10th-place ranking last year, according to an annual report released Tuesday.
F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future states that 30.1 percent of Arkansas adults are obese.
Despite its nationally praised child nutrition programs and public-health initiatives, Arkansas joined a list of eight states with obesity rates over 30 percent in the 2010 report, up from four states in the 2009 report.
While the state has made great strides, it had greater challenges to begin with, said Dr. Joe Thompson, Arkansas’ surgeon general and director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity.
“Without question, Arkansas and the other Southern states have more obesity risk in our children than the other states around the nation,” he said. “It is so critically important for this to be an all-hands-on-deck issue.”
The Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation used phone surveys to determine rates of obesity in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The rankings were compiled using the averages of data from 2007-2009 to avoid single-year anomalies.
For the report, obesity was determined by a person’s body mass index, which is calculated using a height-to-weight ratio. A person is defined as obese if he has a body mass index of 30 to 35 and overweight if he has a body mass index of 25 to 29.9, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The annual study showed that 38 states have adult obesity rates greater than 25 percent. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate over 20 percent.
Ten of the 11 most-obese states in Tuesday’s report are Southern states. Mississippi, with an adult obesity rate of 33.8 percent, topped the rankings for the sixth straight year.
Northeastern and Western states had the lowest adult obesity rates. Colorado had the lowest rate at 19.1 percent.
The report’s authors attributed growing numbers of obese and overweight people in Southern states to a prevalence of poverty and growing black and Hispanic populations.
Arkansas’ black adult obesity rate is 39.8 percent. The state’s Hispanic adult obesity rate is 29.6 percent, compared with 29.3 percent among white adults.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation selected Arkansas as the home for its Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity after the state garnered much publicity for Act 1220 of 2003. Signed into law by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, the act removed vending machines from elementary schools, limited their contents in upper grades, set higher nutrition standards for cafeteria food and required schools to measure students’ body mass indexes.
As of May 31, 20 states and Washington, D.C., have passed school vending-machine regulations, compared with four states five years ago. Twenty states require body-mass-index screenings, compared with four states five years ago. Twenty states and Washington, D.C., have school lunch standards higher than the minimum set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Despite its trendsetting status, Arkansas reported 20.4 percent of children aged 10 to 17 were considered obese in 2007, giving the state a seventh-place ranking among the 50 states, according to the F as in Fat report.
Thompson said child health reports compiled at schools show the state’s changes have slowed the increasing child obesity rate.
“To turn an aircraft carrier around, you have to stop it first,” he said.
Arkansas’ ideas have formed the groundwork for some national strategies, including first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative, Thompson said.
The state now needs to turn its focus to a comprehensive effort that extends beyond schools to achieve change, he said.
Creshelle Nash, medical director for the Arkansas Minority Health Commission, said the group is working to educate minority groups about obesity and advocate for policies on their behalf.
“We can supersize anything for 99 cents, but do people have access to fresh fruits and vegetables?” she asked. The commission has introduced projects to combat obesity and its effects, including an experiment measuring blood pressure to check for hypertension in Springdale Public School students. The Washington County district is 40 percent Hispanic.
The group has also partnered with other public health and social service agencies to form the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention, which offers workplace health programs, educates health professionals in preventing obesity and advocates the creation of public trail systems to create accessible places for low-income families to exercise.
The coalition provided $10,000 to five Arkansas communities to educate local leaders in obesity prevention. The Growing Healthy Communities sites are in Harrison, Batesville, Helena-West Helena, Magnolia and Little Rock.
In addition to its coalition funding, the Harrison site received a $360,000, four-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide access to healthful foods and exercise in Boone and Newton counties. Successful strategies from the pilot project will be used in larger regional and national initiatives, grant manager Cindy Miller said.
The grant has helped launch community gardens in Harrison. City leaders in the area are also revisiting trail programs to provide safe routes to schools and grocery stores.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 06/30/2010