Will Allen Heads to White House to Share Stage With First Lady

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel announced this afternoon that Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen is on his way to the White House to share a podium with First Lady Michelle Obama tomorrow.

The Growing Power founder and CEO is to be one of three featured speakers helping Michelle Obama officially launch a national initiative to fight childhood obesity at 9:30 a.m. PST, Tuesday. Allen is scheduled to speak just before the First Lady.

He will join Judith Palfrey, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Willis “Chip” Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Miss., as they formally announce efforts to raise awareness of the need for children to have healthier schools, more exercise, access to affordable healthy food, and the knowledge to make healthier choices on their own.

The campaign was first broached publicly last month in Michelle Obama’s keynote speech to the National Council of Mayors. President Barack Obama also mentioned the initiative in his State of the Union address.

“We need to look at this as a critical challenge from birth — even from before birth,” Allen said in a prepared statement. “From pre-natal nutrition to what children are being fed in daycare centers, to kindergarten and all through the grades, we have to ask ourselves why we are settling for poor food for our children. We have to institutionalize good food in our schools, and not only in the cafeteria, but in our teaching every day.

Palfrey will speak to and for the medical community on the necessity of addressing childhood obesity as an epidemic disease. In addition to being the T. Berry Brazelton Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, she is the author of Community Child Health: An Action Plan for Today and Child Health In America: Making A Difference Through Advocacy.

Johnson will relate his efforts to change unhealthy habits that had led his community in northwest Mississippi to have the highest rate of childhood obesity in the nation. Since taking office in 2005, Johnson has made funding for parks and recreation a priority, and has actively sought out federal grants to build community gardens, walking trails and sidewalks across the city of 15,000.

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