Shelley Hearne Quotations

The reality is that if a pandemic hits, it's not just a health emergency. It's the big one. It requires big thinking to make sure all those dots are connected. Katrina was a wake-up call.

Bulging waistlines are growing, and they are going to cost taxpayers more dollars, and it's going to cost us in years of life and quality of life, regardless of where you live. We can, and must, do better to start to turn around this obesity epidemic.

Bulging waistlines are growing and it's going to cost taxpayers more dollars regardless of where you live.

If the avian flu were to hit here, it would be like having a Category 5 viral hurricane hit every single state simultaneously.

We're not prepared. It's the ugly truth. If our emergency response failed so badly for a Category 5 hurricane, imagine what would happen if a Category 5 viral storm hit every state.

We've got a dangerous gap here and we need a much clearer strategic game plan.

We have a crisis of poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the U.S. and it's time we dealt with it.

We have a crisis in poor nutrition and physical activity in this country. It's simple math: we are eating more and exercising less. And it's time we deal with it in a much more systematic and realistic way.

People think there is nothing that they can do, that obesity is inevitable. This is not rocket science: It's all about how many calories you're putting in yourself, and how many are getting out. We need to go back to the basics.

Across the board, we have every state failing to meet the national goal of 15 percent or less of the population being obese.

This is quite the toxic jambalaya that is being cooked down there.

It's inexcusable that there are no performance measures or progress reports that the public can use. People need to know what they can expect from the public programs that are intended to protect them in an emergency.