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The article discusses research regarding youth weight perceptions and weight-control intention in America, and it mentions the impacts of sex and body mass index (BMI) on perception and intention. The COMPASS study, which collects from students in grades 9 through 12 and their secondary schools in Ontario and Alberta, Canada, is examined. It states that accurate perceptions about weight were more likely once students' BMI levels reached the obese range.

The author discusses a study by S. Lipperman-Kreda et al. which suggests that tobacco retailer density is associated with smoking onset and youth perceptions of tobacco availability. The author recommends shifting the focus of the study's recommendations from delaying tobacco use to entirely preventing it and discusses the end-game proposal of restricting tobacco sales by a person's year born to create a tobacco-free generation.

Context: The system of local health departments (LHDs) in the United States has the potential to advance a locally oriented public health response in obesity control and reduce geographic disparities. However, the extent to which obesity prevention programs correspond to local obesity levels is unknown., Objective: This study examines the extent to which LHDs across the United States have responded to local levels of obesity by examining the association between jurisdiction-level obesity prevalence and the existence of obesity prevention programs., Design: Data on LHD organizational characteristics from the Profile Study of Local Health Departments and county-level estimates of obesity from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System were analyzed (n = 2300). Since local public health systems are nested within state infrastructure, multilevel models were used to examine the relationship between county-level obesity prevalence and LHD obesity prevention programming and to assess the impact of state-level clustering., Setting: Two thousand three hundred local health department jurisdictions defined with respect to county boundaries., Participants: Practitioners in local health departments who responded to the 2005 Profile Study of Local Health Departments., Main Outcome Measures: Likelihood of having obesity prevention activities and association with area-level obesity prevalence., Results: The existence of obesity prevention activities was not associated with the prevalence of obesity in the jurisdiction. A substantial portion of the variance in LHD activities was explained by state-level clustering., Conclusions: This article identified a gap in the local public health response to the obesity epidemic and underscores the importance of multilevel modeling in examining predictors of LHD performance.