Mayor Nutter honored for anti-obesity efforts
Leadership for Healthy Communities, a program run by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, cites the mayor's efforts to promote bicycle use, decrease sugary-beverage consumption and improve access to healthier food in low-income neighborhoods.
Mayor Nutter's efforts to promote the use of bicycles, decrease the consumption of sugar-laden beverages, fight tobacco use and improve low-income access to healthier foods have won him a national leadership award from a program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The mayor is one of five policy-makers nationwide to receive the 2013 Leadership for Healthy Communities Award, announced today in Baltimore where the organization is sponsoring a "Childhood Obesity Prevention Summit."
"Thanks to Mayor Nutter's commitment to healthy living and eating, Philadelphia has seen declines in childhood obesity rates, including in low-income and communities of color," said the director of Leadership for Healthy Communities, Maya Rockeymoore.
The organization credited Nutter with creating a bicycle-pedestrian plan for the city, including more than 20 miles of new bicycle lanes, the creation of Get Healthy Philly, which received $27 million from the Centers for Disease Control to promote healthier, smoke-free lifestyles and improve access to healthy foods for 100,000 residents of low-income neighborhoods, improving vending machine choices in city-owned buildings and "incentivizing healthy living through a wellness program for city employees."
Click here for Philly.com's politics page.