‘‘Having achieved [tobacco control] as the first priority under
the Bloomberg administration around public health I think gave
confidence and maybe more political will- hey, this worked, and
we should maybe think about that for obesity. [. . .] The fact that
they were able to operationalize it successfully kept that partnership
[between Mayor and Health Commissioner] going and
created leverage and political will.”
[Interviewee 5, DOHMH]
In summary, epidemiological evidence, often collected at city
level, underpinned the framing of obesity as a societal problem
and served to identify possible intervention points within that
paradigm.