Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort between the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation announced the launch of a national initiative on childhood obesity which aims to get coverage for up to 6 million American kids for routine visits to both primary care physicians and dietitians.

"I think we want the children of America to know, No. 1, that we want them to be healthy, we want them to grow up healthy, and we want them to start now," former President Bill Clinton told reporters at his foundation's headquarters in New York City.

The coalition of health groups and insurance companies called a "landmark agreement," is the first of its kind to try to tackle the problem of childhood obesity. Under the initiative participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight.

Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the United States and more than one third of the children are overweight or obese. Getting insurance companies to pay for doctors' visits and other care to help deal with the problem is one of the biggest problems parents of such children face. Clinton said he hoped that the new initiative would address what for many parents is "somewhere between a problem and a nightmare."

The program hopes to address the needs of almost 1 million obese children in the first year by providing health care and reimbursing doctors and registered dietitians for providing in depth counseling and nutritional information on tackling childhood obesity. By the end of three years the program aims to cover 25 % or 6.2 million overweight American children. 

The collaboration includes medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association with insurance companies such as Aetna, WellPoint, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina and of Massachusetts and private companies like PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex. This, Clinton said, is "the first time our three stakeholders have come together to tackle childhood obesity in a comprehensive way."

In 2006 the Alliance for a Healthier Generation worked on an agreement among soft drink manufacturers that established sweetener, calorie and fat guidelines, and limited the sale of sodas in elementary, middle, and high schools attended by 35 million American students.

AHA President Dr. Tim Gardner called the initiative "a very historic moment" and added that direct health care costs for the treatment of children who are already overweight or obese currently tops $14 billion annually, and, overall, obesity costs the nation an estimated $117 billion annually in both healthcare costs and lost productivity.

"We're here today because there is an obesity epidemic in this country," Gardner said. "One in three teens in this country are overweight or obese. There's a risk that this generation will be the first in our history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents."