Health Policy Legislation

Abstract

Obesity is one of the growing issues of America at present. In order to overcome these issues a bill “FIT Kids Act (H.R. 2178)” has been reintroduced in the senate. This paper explains the background, sponsors, and the legislative process of this bill. This paper also explores the issues raised in this bill along with the stakeholders and their influence, and the challenges associated with.

Health Policy Legislation

The Title of the Bill and the Bill number

The title of the bill is “FIT Kids Act (H.R. 2178)”

Background, Sponsors, and the Legislative Process

Around 30% of school-age adolescents and children are obese and overweight in the United Sates. Especially alarming, the prevalence of obesity and overweight in adolescents and children is on rise, furthermore youth are also becoming obese and overweight at their early ages. The rates of childhood obesity have become tripled in the United States over the past few decades, and nowadays, the U.S. is among the countries which have the highest rate of obesity in the world. In effect, in 1970s, just 5 percent of children with ages 2-19 years were overweight compared to almost 17 percent today (Werner, Feinstein & Hardigree, 2007). Owing to these upsetting statistics, numerous governmental, public health, and scientific agencies advise that adolescents and school-age children engage in as minimum as 60 minutes of reasonable to dynamic physical activity each day. In order to overcome these issues a bill was presented which is named as FIT Kids Act.

Senator Tom Harkin reintroduced the bill named “Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act” or FIT Kids Act. This is a bill in order to fight against childhood obesity as well as improve the comfort of all the student by supporting better measurement of physical education and physical activity at the local, school, and state level. The introduction of bill corresponds with the release of new description from IOM or Institute of Medicine focusing the significance of physical activity around the school day with recommending the execution of programs and policies to get better access to the physical education and advance monitoring of the physical education as well as physical activity occasions in schools (US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions, 2013).

Currently, the bill is trapped in American Senate. The bill is being held up with the job package of Obama's Administration, which the state's schools greatly need to defend against enormous teacher suspends for ...