WASHINGTON — Forty-two percent of Americans will be obese by 2020, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine. A documentary airing this week that is based on the findings shows the health care challenges and costs associated with obesity.
THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION 01: CONSEQUENCES: (L-R) Pauline Hill & Cindy Roach. Photo Credit: Photo taken by Jessica Dimmock / Courtesy of HBO
Together with Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kaiser Permanente and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, documentarian John Hoffman – whose credits include the HBO documentaries “Addiction” and “The Alzheimer’s Project” — produced “The Weight of the Nation,” a four-part series on the growing obesity epidemic in the United States. It’s airing now on HBO.
How did you team up with this group of public health organizations for the project?
We wanted to make sure that the audience really knows when we talk about obesity that they are getting the most important information. It’s very important to us to form these partnerships so that the information is unassailable. We turned to the Institute of Medicine, which has been looking at the social determinants of this problem for a number of years. And then we also had to really bring in the CDC because they are the providers of so much public health in the country, and are also the people who measure the health of the country.
Why obesity?
The public health community, after we finished “The Alzheimer’s Project,” were really the ones who were coming to us, knowing that we had accomplished quite a bit with the number of people who were reached with “Addiction” and “The Alzheimer’s Project.” This has been cemented for HBO as part of what our role is as a company, that every few years we will use our platform to improve the nation’s health.
How did this “Weight of the Nation” brand come about?
The CDC had a Weight of the Nation conference two years ago, and when we were developing this as a project starting three years ago and saw that title — it’s an unbeatable name. It really was great synergy for us because we knew that there would be a conference that would be happening at the same time that our documentary series would go on the air and that the Institute of Medicine would release their report at the conference. So this was a well-planned intersection of all of these activities.
Documentaries have had a hand in a lot of social movements recently: “An Inconvenient Truth” for climate change, “Sicko” for health care reform. Is “Weight of the Nation” a conscious effort to light a fire?
Absolutely. … We are trying to sound the loudest possible alarm, that this is an issue of enormous importance to the future health and welfare of this country. [We’re really] looking at the systems that we’ve put in place that are not health-promoting in this country. And we have the intelligence and there is the expertise out there, of people who are really saying that is another way.
Would you say that the documentary is mainly aimed at individuals or policymakers?
It covers a lot of ground. All four parts speak very powerfully to the individual about what their role is for maintaining their health, doing everything they can to raise healthy children and giving them all the tools they need to make very effective decisions about their own health and their families’ health.
THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION 04: CHALLENGES: Herman Strother. Photo Credit: Photo taken by Jessica Dimmock/ Courtesy of HBO
The third and fourth episodes also are speaking to people who really are looking at this from a bit of a higher altitude. Who are looking at how we design the communities we live in, what decisions are being made about the food we grow in this country.
If you could suggest one lifestyle change and one policy change that could get us started on reversing the trend, what would they be?
What I have been most impacted by is the evidence for people just eliminating any sugar-sweetened beverages from their diet. No juices, no sodas, no sports drinks.
Prior to [an early 20st century cold snap that prompted Florida orange growers to squeeze and freeze their crops], we never had sugar-sweetened beverages in the human diet – we couldn’t preserve it. We now think that this is part of the human diet – it never was! We don’t have the biology to handle it.
Second, we have got to really redistribute the wealth in the agricultural sector such that we are making fruit and vegetable farming a viable option for farmers and that we are expanding the fruit and vegetable production in this country so that they are much more available at affordable prices and the quality is much better.
In the short term, is there a response you’re hoping for, maybe from President Barack Obama or Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius?
I hope that we make so much noise that the president, the secretary of health and human services, Mitt Romney – that this becomes an issue of the highest levels of discussion in this country. Because so far, nothing has forced the issue at the level at which it deserves.
“The Weight of the Nation” premiered May 14 on HBO. Viewers can watch the series online.