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KEARNS — Four former federal cabinet secretaries were in town Monday collecting anecdotes and inspiration from Utah leaders on ways to improve the nation's nutrition and increase Americans' opportunities to get physically active.
They heard how Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker is rewriting codes to make the city healthier — from expanding bikeways to allowing chickens and front yard farming, and eventually requiring certain office buildings to include shower facilities to support fitness. They heard about Kennecott Land's Daybreak neighborhood and how it makes walking, biking and even skateboarding the easy thing to do. And how Envision Utah educated the public about the problems of sprawl and spurred an interest in transit.
The leaders — former Health and Human Services secretaries Mike Leavitt and Donna E. Shalala and former Agriculture secretaries Dan Glickman and Ann M. Veneman —are are co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative. Utah was the second stop of a country-wide tour to collect ways to improve health. A report will be released next spring.
"Not every community has a sizeable piece of land in which you can build a new urbanism community," noted Shalala in reference to South Jordan's Daybreak, a 4,000-acre planned neighborhood with more than 20 miles of walking and biking trails and 250 acres of parks and open space. But, "here in Utah, you're trying to reshape what you've got. Things like reviewing codes are absolutely critical."
The former secretaries held their fact-finding sessions at the Utah Olympic Oval, where they also learned how the facility hosts physical education programs for elementary schools and hockey training for high schools.
The BPC, a Washington, D.C., based think tank was created in 2007 and promotes bipartisanship solutions on transportation, energy, economy, national security and health, according to its Web site.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 69 percent of adults and 33 percent of children are overweight or obese. In Utah, 60 percent of adults are overweight or obese, and about 21 percent of elementary and high school students weigh too much.
The nutrition and physical activity nutrition initiative, created in March, has four priorities:
• Investing in children's health, including encouraging breastfeeding, limiting screen time and including fruits and vegetables in all meals.
• Creating healthy schools in the wake of cutbacks in physical education and nutrition education.
• Improving the health of communities so that residents have easy access to healthy, affordable food, public transportation and safe playgrounds.
• Developing healthy institutions through employee wellness plans at large workplaces, improved food concessions at entertainment venues and facilities designed to promote physical activity.
Glickman, agriculture secretary from 1995 to 2001, said the goal is a set of recommendations for government and the private sector to "get people healthier, live longer, fight disease before you're treated what I call horizontally."
While Utah's emphasis on the outdoors may not apply to major metropolitan communities, "a lot of the principles are applicable wherever you are. We're going to think about," Glickman said.
The group seemed most impressed with how Envision Utah has promoted new urbanism, with its emphasis on walkable, sustainable neighborhoods. Back in the 1990s, Utahns were persuaded because they didn't like the rapid growth and resulting problems like congestion and rising cost of housing, Leavitt, Utah' former governor and Envision Utah co-chair, recalled.
He wondered if the threat of obesity, disease and a shorter life span would provide the same sort of motivation for better planning today.
Get a weekday workout
Salt Lake City and the Downtown Alliance offer Weekday Workouts at the downtown Gallivan Center every Monday through Thursday until Aug. 28; except for Aug. 4, 10, 17, 18, 24 and 31. Sessions are 45 minutes long and begin at 5:15 p.m. For more details, call 801-535-6110 or visit http://www.thegallivancenter.com.