History

How YAAO Began

Obesity is a growing epidemic that continues to jeopardize the future health and well-being of our children. Nationally, obesity rates among children have tripled since the late 1970s while closer to home in Los Angeles County, more than 1 in 5 students in the 5th, 7th and 9th grades are now obese.

Children who are obese are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and depression, as well as develop diabetes and other chronic conditions such as asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, orthopedic troubles, liver problems and breathing problems during sleep. Most alarmingly, obese children have a 70-80% chance of becoming obese adults, which translates into exponentially rising health and economic costs.

Unfortunately, public education and encouragement to adopt healthier lifestyles are not enough to solve this crisis. Social and physical environmental factors - such as poverty, our children's food environment, limited access to safe places for physical activity, and increased time spent on sedentary activities - must also be addressed, which is where Youth Activism Against Obesity comes into play.

In 2005, the Health Eating Active Communities (HEAC) program was established by The California Endowment and was the first program of its kind to utilize policy and environmental change strategies as the primary approach to reversing the childhood obesity epidemic. The pioneering work of the HEAC program has led to the emergence of a new type of childhood obesity prevention initiative that seeks to create environments rich with healthy food choices and opportunities for physical activity, rather than focus on changing individual eating and activity behaviors in an unsupportive physical and social environment. Youth Activism Against Obesity (YAAO) was conceptualized to give youth an opportunity to communicate with peer youth on these issues.

Youth Activism Against Obesity was created to develop youth-driven advocacy through social marketing by utilizing various forms of information technology and communication that today's media-savvy youth integrate into their daily lives. Forty youth leaders (20 at each HEAC site identified by a YAAO Project Manager and two Youth Coordinators working with the individual schools) were chosen to participate in the design of a social marketing campaign to plan as well as the planning and content of the website, www.werefedup.com.

The initial focus will be on two HEAC populations in The City of Baldwin Park and South Los Angeles, as these communities consist primarily of low-income Latino and African American families prone to high rates of obesity.