One year ago this week, Michelle Obama began the ambitious Let’s Move! campaign, focusing on helping families and children eat healthier and move more. Prevention Institute applauds the early achievements, and appreciates how the campaign has been—quietly but significantly—influencing environmental factors that contribute to opportunities to eat healthily and play safely. Here are some ways we’re helping support that work.

Connecting violence prevention and chronic disease
Let’s Move! highlights not just physical activity, but safe accessible places to play. Prevention Institute, in partnership with Senator Tom Harkin, Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Representative Barbara Lee, sponsored a joint congressional hearing last week, Addressing the Intersection: Preventing Violence and Promoting Healthy Eating and Active Living. The standing-room-only turnout was testament to the fact that congress, federal agencies, and national organizations are interested in understanding the linkages and identifying policy solutions that will make a difference. Speakers including Linda Degutis, Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at CDC and Dr.Deborah Prothrow-Stith, UNITY Co-Chair, highlighted that violence is a preventable public health issue. Braided strategies and multi-field partnerships between physical activity, food systems and violence prevention advocates and institutions are needed to foster healthy and safe communities. See more.

Ensuring accurate information for parents
Michelle Obama has said, ‘parents shouldn’t need a magnifying glass and a calculator’ to pick healthy products for their kids, and our recent study Claiming Health finds that the food industry package labeling still isn’t giving parents reliable information: 84% of kids’ foods studied with front of package labeling failed to meet basic nutritional standards. The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, which oversees the voluntary standards, has already responded to our concerns. The bottom line: we need the FDA to require uniform labeling standards for all products that use front-of-package labels, as one step in bringing families real information and healthy food options. Read the full study.

Reflecting Community Prevention Success
Let’s Move! emphasizes what we all can do to promote healthy eating and physical activity, and we’d like to highlight the great work happening across the country through community prevention efforts that are focused on exactly what we all can do--and are doing . Businesses and health departments are getting together with churches, schools and families to make changes right where they live—from new complete streets in Nashville, to farm-to-school programs in La Plata County, Colorado. We invite you to view recent stories of success on our Communities Taking Action map.