Team Profile Summary

The Washington, DC Team is focused on creating a community-driven Culture of Wellness. This focus was bolstered by the data emphasizing the particular dangers faced by District residents from the prevalence of obesity and its role in the many chronic health conditions they faced, especially diabetes, hypertension, asthma, various cardiovascular challenges, and cancers.

The DC team is committed to ensuring that the population that has been most adversely impacted by poverty, joblessness, poor housing, and other social determinants, benefits from – rather than is replaced by – these changes ensuing from gentrification, the accompanying economic boom and other structural changes currently underway.

Team Profile Details

Problem Statement

The 2007 release of “F as in Fat”, a report of the Alliance for America’s Health, identifying District youth as having the highest rates of obesity in the country, provided an important catalyst that prompted Department support for staff efforts to build a broad base of support for addressing the obesity crisis and likely Council funding for same. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity constitute a healthcare burden that directly and/or indirectly affects the majority of residents in the District of Columbia. The incidence of these chronic diseases has grown to epidemic proportions, and the District’s community has been affected at higher rates than the nation as a whole.

• More than 160,000 residents have cardiovascular disease.
• Approximately 35,000 residents have diabetes.
• Over half of the District’s population is overweight with 115,000 of those residents being obese.

Team Objectives

• Mobilize those community and organization stakeholders to affect both the policies and the activities that will support, unify and engage the community in creating the culture of wellness that we seek.
• Capitalize on the DC Department of Health’s recent commitment to developing a State Plan on Obesity.
• The Robert Wood Johnson invitation to DC to present a 4-year collaborative proposal to address Child Obesity through policy initiatives.
• The District of Columbia’s implementation of its funding from Alliance for a Healthier Generation targeting local schools to work to eliminate childhood obesity and building healthy schools and healthy communities.

Community Partners (in alphabetical order):

• American Cancer Society, District of Columbia South Atlantic Division
• Consumer Health Foundation
• CORE Health
• DC ACORN
• DC Department of Health Community Health Administration Bureau of Nutrition & Physical Fitness (NPF), Child and Adolescent School Health (CASH)
• DC – HHS Partnership Office
• DC Hunger Solutions (DCHS) of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)
• Metropolitan DC Health Consortium (MDCHC)
• Summit Health Institute for Research and Education
• The Washington Informer Newspaper
• War on Obesity Coalition
• WPFW Pacifica Radio, 89.3FM

For more information and to become involved, please contact:

Team Lead:  Michele A. Tingling-Clemmons
Email:  Michele.tingling-clemmons@dc.gov          
Phone: 202.442.9140; Fax: 202.442.4947