Former First Lady Melania Trump is already preparing to resurface as a presidential spouse next year, and she has an opportunity to drive change and forge unity in confronting the most desperate long-term health crisis in centuries.
Now running with the unprecedented endorsement of a legacy Kennedy, the Trump family may soon reclaim White House authority and with it the opportunity to pick up where former First Lady Michelle Obama left off. Childhood obesity represents one of the few issues on which the new Republican White House can reclaim moral authority and also galvanize a bipartisan political movement with a major push to end this destructive epidemic.
When the Obama family came into office, the epidemic of childhood obesity catalyzed what at first had seemed an optimistic initiative to tackle the health care crisis plaguing our children. By 2009, nearly 17 percent of children aged 2-19 were obese, representing a striking increase from just 5 percent in 1971. In 2017, the number had grown even higher, with more than 19 percent of children in America, or nearly 1 in 5, struggling with obesity. The number of kids and teens coping with “severe obesity” reached 6 percent for the first time ever by 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The first lady’s movement obviously failed, and the campaign did so for two probable reasons: 1) half the country wrote off the celebrity-infused campaign as an unserious example of nanny-state finger-wagging from elites in D.C., and 2)
