Rising Obesity in the United States Is a Public Health Crisis

Obesity is a grave public health threat that’s still on the rise in the United States. The latest federal data show that nearly 40 percent of adults were obese in 2015–16, up from 34 percent in 2007–08. In a To the Point post, the Commonwealth Fund’s David Blumenthal, M.D., and Shanoor Seervai argue that while solutions emphasizing food and diet may help in individual cases, policy solutions are required to fight the obesity epidemic nationally.