Improving legal competencies for obesity prevention and control.

T his paper is one of four interrelated papers resulting from the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control (Summit) convened in June 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Society of Law, Medicine, & Ethics. Each of the papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: (1) laws and legal authorities for public health practitioners; (2) legal competencies public health practitioners and legal and policy decision makers need for use of these laws and authorities; (3) cross-disciplinary and cross-jurisdiction coordination of law-based public health actions; and (4) information on public health law best practices. Collectively, they are referenced as the "white papers." Our purpose is to offer action options that will help to improve the legal competencies of public health practitioners and policy decision makers with respect to drafting, interpreting, implementing, and enforcing laws and regulations that are relevant to the effective prevention and control of obesity. The accompanying assessment paper provided a foundation for this agenda by first establishing that legal competence for obesity prevention and control is important for both health professionals, who with proper training can effectively interject health considerations into decision making processes, and non-health professionals involved with relevant policy and legal work, who with proper training can effectively incorporate health considerations into their decisions.l The paper acknowledges apparent gaps in not only health professionals' understanding of legal tools relevant to obesity but also policymakers' recognition of how obesity relates to their decisions. In addition, this paper set forth specific competencies each of these two broad groups should have to strengthen their legal preparedness for obesity prevention and control. To improve these competencies within and among the relevant professionals in these two broad groups, our framework identifies critical knowledge, skills, , values, analytical approaches, and communication strategies. We also suggest mechanisms by which public health professionals can interact with professionals from other relevant areas and increase the capacity to address the obesity epidemic. Our framework involves four action items: (1) options to improve the identified competencies; (2) approaches to strengthen the training of current and future professionals to apply laws and authorities; (3) tools to increase legal com-petency; and (4) suggestions for the evaluation ofthe effectiveness oflegal competency to address obesity. Options to Improve the Identified Competencies Table 1 sets forth tangible options to improve the legal …