During my pediatric training in the 1970’s, I was taught about a rare condition called MODY – mature onset diabetes of the young. It was a condition where obese children wear out their pancreas and develop adult type II diabetes normally seen in people over 50. This condition is no longer rare. Significant complications of type II diabetes normally present after dealing with the condition for 20-25 years. This means that if you are 50 years old at the onset you will deal with related heart and kidney disease in your seventies. But pediatricians are now seeing this condition commonly in adolescents. These children will need to address cardiac and renal complications decades earlier when they should be in the prime of their earning capacity. The sedentary and over-eating lifestyle is compromising the next generation and our future workforce in remarkable ways.

We must address this epidemic through the schools and the workplace where children and adults spend the majority of their waking hours. Successful school efforts such as the one in Arkansas that measures the children’s BMI and places it on their quarterly report card is a good start. Corporate efforts that build a culture of health inside their organization must be fostered. Great efforts such as the ones you invested in at Pitney Bowes need to be duplicated. President Obama has spoken about bending the curve of escalating health care costs. Benchmark employers who have build a culture of health (sometimes on the foundation of a culture of safety) such as Dow Chemical and Caterpillar are experiencing significant health care cost moderation as well as significant productivity gains.

When a culture of health is present there is a social pressure to conduct a healthy lifestyle. Instead of a smoking break, there is time set aside for exercise. Corporate meetings serve fruits and vegetables not donuts, muffins and coffee cake. Peers encourage each other to become and stay fit. This culture has been and can be accomplished within any organization with the appropriate use of benefit design, incentives, rewards, recognition and competition. Once refined, extending these efforts to communities and regions would be a logical next step. Corporate cultures of health will build into communities, regions and a nation of health.