Remember This Date.

February 9, 2010. Write this down; make a mental note; consider it significant. This is the date that First Lady Michelle Obama announced her “Let’s Move” initiative to eliminate childhood obesity in a generation. It was all over the news. But you may have missed another announcement that is even more significant. The President appointed a Task Force on Childhood Obesity consisting of leaders of multiple federal departments and agencies. 2/9/10 is the day that all of our efforts to get kids active, fit, and healthy got a name, some celebrity, and some power.

This is a one-two punch of focus and power. The spotlight will now be strong. This is our best chance in a long time to make great progress on our shared vision of active healthy kids.

If, like me, you have been working for a long time to help children be active and healthy, we have been waiting for our concerns to be at the top of the national agenda. We can be proud that we have been on the right path and pursued a noble cause. But movement and change have been too slow. That is likely to change now. People in power want to listen to us now. They have joined our quest.

But progress will not be easy. Many Americans don’t think the country needs to change to provide more opportunities for kids to be active and to remove barriers to safe physical activity. Many people have a “just do it” mentality—it is a parent’s job to serve good food and tell the child to be active. But when good food is not in your neighborhood, no parks are in your neighborhood, traffic is too fast, and PE has been cut from the school day, what is a parent going to do? All Americans face barriers to being active, and it should be our goal to make it more convenient, safer, and more enjoyable to be active every day.

But the place to start is PE. This is the one program that can affect every child every day. PE needs to be active, and it needs to be taught by well-trained teachers. We know this works, and we can improve PE quickly. SPARK has been helping schools deliver activity-promoting PE for over 15 years. SPARK is ready and able to do more. Today, it was announced that the state of Florida received about $2 million to provide SPARK PE to every middle school in the state! One of the four goals of Let’s Move is to provide more opportunities for physical activity, and SPARK will help achieve it.

Our jobs are not finished. We cannot sit back and think the President and First Lady will make sure excellent PE is in every school; they will not eliminate childhood obesity on their own. We need to work harder, but our work is likely to have more of an effect now. It is up to us as educators, experts in PE and physical activity, parents, and members of our communities to support Let’s Move. We need to speak up. We need to keep information, good ideas, success stories, and good news about PE, physical activity, and solutions to childhood obesity visible in every communication channel all around the country. Please do your part. Sign on at http://www.letsmove.gov/ and send your thoughts to the First Lady.

Make 2/9/10 the day that you became a more vocal advocate for active healthy kids.

Jim Sallis
www.drjamessallis.sdsu.edu