Michelle Obama Kicks Off Childhood Obesity Drive Next Week

First Lady Michelle Obama officially kicks off her national campaign to combat childhood obesity a week from Tuesday in Washington. As part of the run-up to her announcement, Mrs. Obama plans to meet with members of Congress and the cabinet on Tuesday (Feb. 2) at the White House.

I'm told by an East Winger that the session with three cabinet members, four senators and two House members is to make sure the various elements of the multi-faceted program are in place in advance of the launch.

Mrs. Obama is taking on her first substantive policy role in overseeing the Obama administration programs and partnerships dealing with what is considered a national epidemic of childhood obesity.

At the Tuesday meeting, Mrs. Obama and the others "will discuss combined efforts to create national awareness of the dangers of childhood obesity and the simple steps families, schools, businesses, non-profit communities and all levels of government can take together to solve it."

Mrs. Obama, in taking on the leadership of the obesity drive will be stepping out of her cloistered East Wing world and thrusting herself into the routine rough and tumble of congressional politics and policy making. For example, after the cabinet members and lawmakers confer with her in the Old Family Dining Room, they will be available to the media to talk about what happened in the meeting.

Attending the session will be Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

The congressional members are from the committees that will deal with the major portions of the legislation involved in the drive, which will focus on schools and nutritional elements of the lunches they serve. The lawmakers meeting with Mrs. Obama will be: Sen. Blanche Lincoln, (D-Ark.), the Agriculture Committee chairwoman; Sen. Saxby Chambliss, (R-Ga), the committee's top Republican; Sen. Tom Harkin, (D-Io.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Mike Enzi, (R-Wyo.), the ranking Republican on that panel. Only the Democratic House chairmen from the relevant committees were invited: Rep. George Miller, (D-Calif.) chaiarman of the Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Collin Peterson, (D-Minn.) head of the Agriculture Committee.

The roll out has been carefully staged.
On Jan. 13, Mrs. Obama and her staff discussed for the first time her taking on a policy role; on Jan. 20, Mrs. Obama sought to enlist the nations mayors, addressing them at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual winter meeting, where she highlighted some "best practices" of cities to keep kids healthy; last Thursday she traveled to a YMCA in Alexandria, Va., a Washington suburb where she talked about the epidemic of childhood obesity with Sebelius and Surgeon General Regina Benjamin.

During her YMCA talk, Mrs. Obama said at times her daughters, Malia, 11 and Sasha, 8, -- who play sports at their school and look trim-- had to be careful with their weight a few years ago.

Said Mrs. Obama, "we were fortunate enough to have a pediatrician, as I've mentioned, that kind of waved the red flag for me as a mother, and basically cautioned me that I had to take a look at my own children's BMI. Now, we went to our pediatrician all the time. I thought my kids were perfect -- they are and always will be -- but he warned that he was concerned that something was getting off balance, because fortunately he was a pediatrician that worked predominantly in an African American urban community, and he knew these trends existed, and he was watching very closely in his client population, his patient population."