City turns down beverage-industry funds from Children's Hospital for anti-obesity program

The Nutter administration has turned down an offer from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to fund an antiobesity program through city health centers, because the money to pay for it would come from one of the administration's political adversaries, the nation's beverage industry.

The city's health commissioner, Donald F. Schwarz, confirmed last week that Children's had approached the city with a proposal to pay for a program aimed at educating young people about issues involving food intake and exercise.

Neither the details of the program nor the amount of funding was specified, Schwarz said, because he cut off discussions with Children's when he learned that the funding originated with a $10 million grant from a foundation set up by the American Beverage Association.

"My position is that that shouldn't happen," said Schwarz, a pediatrician who was division chief of adolescent medicine at Children's before he joined the city administration in early 2008.

"We should not be receiving funding from the beverage industry to fund a program in the city . . . because we wouldn't take funding like that from other industries, like the gun industry or the tobacco industry," Schwarz said. "We have taken a stand that opposes the products that they sell."

Mayor Nutter agrees with his health commissioner.

"He doesn't want the money even if it passes through" the hospital, said Nutter's press secretary, Mark McDonald. "We're appreciative of the programs CHOP is engaged in regarding obesity, and we have our separate programs. They're not in any way contradictory, we're working in the same area, but this is the mayor's view on this: He doesn't want to be accepting money from that group."

For two years, the administration has tried and failed to persuade City Council to establish a 2-cents-an-ounce tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

While city and School District budgets needed the money, initially estimated at $77 million a year, Nutter and Schwarz also made clear that they wanted to discourage soda consumption, especially among children.

Scientific studies have linked sweetened drinks to increased risks of obesity in both children and adults, among other medical conditions including diabetes and hypertension.

Children's Hospital - whose doctors testified in City Council about the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks - announced last March that it had accepted a three-year, $10 million grant from a nonprofit foundation set up by the beverage group.