Major General Tony Cucolo will keynote the 2015 Texas Health Champion Award Ceremony on September 15th in Austin.
“Lifelong physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle are key elements of strong civil society,” says Major General Tony Cucolo, the keynote speaker for the upcoming Texas Health Champion Award ceremony on September 15th.
Having retired from his position in the U.S. Army, Cucolo now serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Leadership Development and Veterans’ affairs at the University of Texas as well as a leader in the organization Mission: Readiness, where he applies the creative and strategic thinking he learned in his military training to the complex problem of childhood obesity.
Mission: Readiness brings former military leaders together to promote the wellbeing of American children as the future servicemembers of the United States. The organization takes a special interest in fitness and health, especially because young adults are increasingly disqualified from joining the military due to their weight and overall physical fitness.
In 2010, Mission: Readiness released a report entitled “Too Fat to Fight” followed by its 2012 sequel “Still Too Fat to Fight.” Both cited the worrying statistic that 1 in 4 young adults were too overweight to serve and declared the obesity epidemic a national security problem.
“I watched the impact of habits in our society over time on the fitness of 17 to 25 year olds who wished to volunteer for military service,” says Cucolo. “What drew me to Mission: Readiness was a fervent desire to do whatever I could to help my country get ‘left’ of this situation.”
To combat rising rates of military ineligibility, Generals like Cucolo advocate for healthier school environments, hoping to intervene in the place where children spend a significant portion of their day. They seek to remove junk food from schools, improve the nutrition of cafeteria lunches, and introduce better physical education programs into the curriculum.
“I have learned in the latter part of my career that if you want to make a strategic difference in a population, you have to think in time and think long,” Cucolo says. “In this case, if we know what kinds of healthy lifestyle habits we need in fit, strong, and healthy adults, what do we need to do with our children, and how early?”
As keynote speaker, Cucolo will bring a unique perspective to the discussion of the obesity epidemic. We hope you will join us on the evening of September 15, 2015 at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin for the Texas Health Champion Award Ceremony to hear from this decorated senior military leader and to celebrate the achievements of the Texas Health Champion and Rising Star award recipients.
Register for the event here.
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