A Political Perspective on Obesity: How Past Policy Can Inform Future Change

Abstract

Obesity has become a central issue in America’s public health crisis. This paper aims to address the political complexities behind what officials now consider an epidemic. The central questions of this thesis are: what are the political factors behind enacting healthcare policy in America? And more specifically, do certain political factors play a larger role than others? Scholarship around this subject has delved deeply into specific factors like “issue framing” and “agenda-setting” to answer these incredibly important questions. Obesity, like any healthcare issue, has layers of complex intersections of political actors with diverse sets of self-interests. This research is important to explore because it can provide insight and context into what barriers policy-makers have to navigate on a daily basis. By understanding context, we can start to piece together why issues remain stagnant and why politicians move in certain directions. For the issue of obesity, this is incredibly important and contemporary, especially as policy-makers attempt to find solutions. I forge my argument using a comparative case study to analyze the similarities between the obesity and tobacco-addiction epidemics. I find that issue framing and agenda-setting, along with lobbying and the complex nature of the federal system play a significant role in policy outcomes in both of these cases. The implications of these findings are that it will take a concerted, comprehensive effort to solve the obesity crisis in the United States.