Understanding Obesity and Program Participation in the Context of Poverty and Food Insecurity

Health officials, scientists and the public are increasingly concerned about the obesity epidemic and accompanying morbidity, mortality, health care costs, and loss of quality of life. This concern motivated Gibson’s article in this issue (1). Rapid shift in the distribution of relative weight to higher values has resulted in a substantially greater number of people being classified as obese. There is considerable interest in what policy and...