Journal #2

Kendra Harms                                     Let’s Move                             October 7, 2014

            This article discusses an interview with Robin Schepper about Michelle Obamas “Let’s Move” campaign.  The title of this article is “Let’s Move! Gets Moving.”  Robin Schepper is a long time political strategist and the executive director of Let’s Move.  In this article Schepper talks about how the Let’s Move campaign has grown since it was first launched.  Over the past year the state, city and regional parks have gotten really involved in helping with Let’s Move.  Schepper mentions four barriers in encouraging obese children to join in the physical activity portion of Let’s Move.  These four barriers are inspiration, access, programming and infrastructure. Inspiration is a barrier because things like video games motivate children to stay inside rather than go play outside.  Access is an issue because sometimes it is hard for children to get transportation to go to places like a park.  Programming is another barrier because parents don’t want their children to go to parks alone unless there is something going on there with a safe organization.  The lack of infrastructure is the last barrier he talks about. He suggest that with the help of organizations, celebrities and being more creative to encourage all parks to get involved will eliminate these barriers. 

            In the first article I read, they had mentioned the Let’s Move campaign focusing on more physical activity for children, better food labeling and healthier foods in schools.  However, Schepper mentions in “Lets Move! Gets Moving” only about physical activity and the problems they are facing in the first year with it. This source is not necessarily responding to my first article because the first article was simply an overview all about the Let’s Move campaign.  However, it does show a different viewpoint on how easily different aspects of this campaign can be carried out effectively.  “Let’s Move! Says Michelle Obama” was very confident in how easily this campaign could be applied in schools and communities.  “Let’s Move! Gets Moving” shows that there are many challenges so far as this campaign begins to grow. 

            This article has changed my thinking process in a drastic way.  Since in just one year they are having this many problems with one of their key points of their campaign it makes me wonder how well thought out Let’s Move is.  It is interesting because I feel like they would have already considered these aspects of physical activity and found a way to address them before the campaign even began.  Since parks play a big part of the physical activity portion I found it surprising that they had not already set up programming and access to them before they began the campaign. If physical activity is already having this many issues, it makes me wonder if they are also having issues with implementing better food labeling and healthier foods in schools.  It seems to me that physical activity is the number one point of this campaign since it is named “Let’s Move.” They are paired with parks, but I feel like there should be a lot more things they are doing to increase physical activity than just that. I feel like since it is the most important aspect apparent, they should be pairing with multiple organizations.  Since they are implementing healthier foods in schools it makes me wonder if it would be possible for them to implement physical activity into schools.  This article has changed my thinking process by making me wonder what else they are doing to increase physical activity beside using parks. 

            This article has definitely made me consider many new questions for my research.  A question that immediately came to my mind was what other issues are they facing with this campaign besides physical activity?  I plan to answer this question by doing more research on the problems so far in the last year with the Let’s Move campaign. Another question that came to my mind is what are they doing to implement physical activity in places that do not have parks that they have paired with?  Have they paired with any other organizations?  Has more physical activity been implemented in schools?  Do they plan to pair with more organizations and possibly schools?  I am reconsidering my thought that Let’s Move can effectively increase physical activity with only parks.  I think that this alone is not enough to tackle childhood obesity.  This article brings an important light of research to my attention that what kind of physical activity are they doing at parks?  I will go about finding answers for these questions by doing more research on physical activity in the Let’s Move campaign.  I hope to find answers on how this physical activity alone can help tackle childhood obesity and how.