Former Governor Sarah Palin recently claimed that First Lady Michelle Obama's childhood obesity prevention campaign inappropriately usurps the role of parents in making food choices for their children. Her critical comments fail to recognize that, in too many instances, parents have become prisoners of school and community environments that restrict their child's access to healthy food and physical activity options.

During a breakout session at last winter's White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit, President Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers introduced the subject of Social Security reform by suggesting that an increase in the retirement age may be a prudent consideration given that "Americans are living longer". When it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that "everyone" is not living longer and that, in fact, some researchers are forecasting a drop in America's overall life expectancy due to the childhood obesity epidemic.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently released a national roadmap to address and reduce disparities in health status and health care among racial and ethnic minorities. It also released a national strategy for engaging communities across the country to harness the collective power of collaboration in order to tackle these serious issues.

For eleven years I pleaded with my elderly father to allow a caregiver to help him with my ailing mother, but after 55 years of loving each other he adamantly insisted on taking care of her himself. Every caregiver I hired to help him soon sighed in exasperation, "Jacqueline, I just can't work with your father–his temper is impossible to handle. I don't think he’ll accept help until he's on his knees himself."