BENTONVILLE -- Gov. Asa Hutchinson has a celebrity on his side in his administration's fight for a healthier Arkansas.
Hutchinson and Savvy Shields, a Fayetteville native crowned Miss America in September, appeared Monday at Fulbright Junior High School to promote the Healthy Active Arkansas initiative, a framework for encouraging and enabling healthier lifestyles.
Hutchinson, addressing several dozen students and staff members in the gymnasium, announced Shields had accepted his request to serve as honorary chairman of Healthy Active Arkansas.
"We're very proud of her," Hutchinson said. "She's an incredible young lady that has a national platform from which she can promote her agenda."
Shields, 21, said the initiative matches up with her platform, "Eat better, live better."
"I'm so honored to be a part of it and to get to help with this initiative that is unbelievably important," Shields said.
Healthy Active Arkansas started about 1½ years ago. It's designed in part to encourage businesses to promote exercise and healthier choices among their workers, Hutchinson said.
There is a public policy aspect to it, as well. Hutchinson mentioned a law passed during this year's legislative session that encourages schools to buy up to 20 percent of their food from local suppliers, which Hutchinson said would encourage better eating.
"In our Legislature we're also trying to provide more health insurance for those in Arkansas to make sure everyone has access to a doctor, and they don't simply have to go to an emergency room to have health care coverage," Hutchinson said.
Arkansas ranked as the most overweight state in the nation for 2014, with 35.9 percent of adults qualifying as obese, according to a report by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Shields said she's in a different state every two days, "So I've gotten to see and be a part of so many different approaches to what it means to eat healthy and live better."
Greg Bledsoe, the state's surgeon general from Rogers, also spoke about the initiative.
"In public health, there's an old adage that says, 'It's a lot less expensive and a lot more important to put a fence at the top of the hill than an ambulance at the bottom of the hill,'" Bledsoe said. "The idea is we need to be turning our attention to things that prevent illness and injury and not just pouring our money and time and attention into things that are dealing with those injuries and illnesses after they happen."
Hutchinson said he thought Fulbright Junior High School would be a good venue for Monday's announcement. Among those in the audience was his grandson Abel Hutchinson, a Fulbright student.
Metro on 05/02/2017