Table. Illustrative Quotes, Qualitative Interview of City, County, and State Policy Makers About Childhood Obesity, New York State, 2010–2011.

Category	Subcategory	Quote	Office
Importance of childhood obesity (RQ1)	High importance	“The economics of this aren’t just on the health care side, it’s in terms of the potential for these children to become productive members of the workforce and help us solve these problems down the road.”	State
	Low importance	“Well, as far as my position as mayor when I’m working with city issues, [childhood obesity] is very low.”	Town
Causes of childhood obesity (RQ2)	Parental/family-related causes	“I think also tied to it though is a cultural change, where the family situation is such that both the parents or you know, we have single-parent homes, you know, the parent is out working to provide for the family, so the sit down at home over, you know, a full-course meal, that’s balanced, that’s becoming more difficult for families to achieve.”	State
		“I think parents are somewhat responsible because they need to be more in-tune to providing good and nutritional things to our families. I think we need to limit the amount of access to [television] that we have our kids watch.”	County: Health
	External causes	“People are on computers more, kids are playing video games — we never had video games growing up.”	State
	Internal causes	“Kids [are] staying in and playing video games instead of going outside and playing, and instead of walking over to see a friend you can just text them and talk to them on the Internet, on your phone, on your iTouch.”	County: Executive
Responsibility to address childhood obesity (RQ3)	Joint responsibility	“It’s everybody’s responsibility. I mean, we’ve got physicians who are fat, so how can they tell somebody to lose weight, right? I mean, it’s hard. It’s really hard to maintain your weight. So, it’s everybody’s responsibility.”	State
		“It has to be a joint effort to look at the obesity rates and to try to reduce the intake that we have and it’s just not one individual or one agency.”	County: Health
	Parents	“Because they are really in charge of . . . number one, modeling good behavior, number two, ensuring that the children are eating . . . the right amount of calories and ensuring that the kids are getting the right amount of physical activity. They’re responsible for ensuring that kids unplug, you know a number of the stuff that they do that promotes a sedentary lifestyle or recreation. So, the parents first.”	County: Health
		“So that brings in the parent. You know . . . and like I said, I’m not blaming this . . . they have the kids the most. But the parents have the other . . . the most. I believe that there are a lot of them that aren’t paying attention to this activity.”	County: Health
	Government	“I think it has to be federal because otherwise, you’ve got this system where one state has one thing going and another state has . . . but if you look at the states that have the highest levels of obesity, quite frankly, it looks like the states that have the least regulatory function.”	Town
	Schools	“I think probably schools have a lot to do that with school activities, school education . . . because children can often bring things home from the school in order to help a household understand, you know, better nutrition or better activities.”	Town
	Food industry	“And industry, frankly. I mean, I don’t want to leave out the food industry. I think we have to ask them to step up to the plate as well and . . . stop giving us as much junk as they’re giving us, you know?”	State
Solutions for childhood obesity (RQ4)	Hypothetical solutions	“I’d love to see something in place for schools, like a club for the overweight, or free clinics where individuals are not forced to join.”	County: Executive
		“Create resources and tool kits that can help parents, caregivers and school officials with this problem . . . so we connect them to the resources like online BMI calculators.”	Town
	Existing solutions	“We’re working with one school, elementary school, that for a child’s birthday celebration, rather than the parent bringing in cake and cupcakes and ice cream and all of that, they’re, we’re piloting that the child’s, on the day the child’s birthday is celebrated they get an extra recess to play. Be at play outside, play inside, depending on the weather, for more activity. Again, to promote that activity, the physical activity aspect rather than associating a celebration always with food. Particularly unhealthy food.”	County: Health
	Proposed solutions	“We have also in the school district situation some proposed legislation in connection with whether or not the soft drinks should be in vending machines in school districts and allowed to advertise things of that nature.”	State

Abbreviation: RQ, research question; BMI, body mass index.