This week, two studies were released that together tell a familiar and troubling narrative about American health—but they also present the running industry with a unique opportunity it is well-suited to seize.

On the encouraging side, U.S. life expectancy rose in 2024, the first sustained increase since 2019. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), an American born in 2024 could expect to live to age 79—more than half a year longer than someone born in 2023. The gain came as the country continued to recover from COVID, while overdose deaths declined as well. That matters.

But context matters more.

America still trails other industrialized nations. Plus, the day before the NCHS report, a study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, projected that by 2035 nearly half of all American adults—about 126 million people—will live with obesity. In 1990, the figure was 19.3 percent. Now, within a decade, it’s expected to reach 46.9 percent, with the sharpest increases in the Midwest and South, though no region is immune.

This is not a new trend–but in our increasingly sedentary society, the scale has never been this pronounced, nor the consequences more severe.

Health Initiatives, Then and Now

In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower created the President’s Council on Physical Fitness after studies showed American children falling behind their European peers. John F. Kennedy reinvigorated it in 1961, briefly making physical fitness a national concern rather than a personal afterthought. After his assassination, the urgency faded.

Decades later, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative tried to revive the idea that childhood nutrition and physical activity mattered. She faced fierce political resistance, and ultimately her initiative faded as well.

The pattern is clear: flashes of concern, followed by retreat.

Faux Fixes

Even the military eventually ran into a wall. Faced with shrinking recruitment eligibility from the population pool, the services lowered BMI and waistline standards rather than confront the underlying reality. Instead of fixing the problem, we lowered the bar—much like teaching to standardized tests rather than teaching for comprehension.

This didn’t happen by accident.

Systems Create Outcomes

Our medical system pays for treatment, not prevention. Nutrition is barely addressed in most medical schools. And in a society increasingly engineered around sitting, we’ve somehow decided that physical well-being—the flesh-and-blood foundation of everything else—is optional, if not indulgent.

Others and I have been writing about this for years, asking when government intervention becomes warranted and how much damage corporate lobbying has done to even modest attempts at reform. Those questions haven’t gone away. The money is still there. The lobbying is still there. The disparities between the haves and have-nots continue to widen when it comes to food, health care, and opportunity.

At this point, arguing only about what government should do starts to feel like a stall tactic.

Because we’re sitting inside a sport that already has part of the answer hiding in plain sight.

A First Call to Action

In 2008, I gave the keynote at Road Race Management’s annual conference in Florida and suggested that childhood obesity should be the running industry’s charitable cause—not because it was fashionable, but because movement works. Running before or after school improves behavior, focus, and health. We already had the tool.

We also had proof of what the sport could do when it mobilized. At the inaugural Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego in 1998, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training raised $15 million in a single day—a record at the time.

According to a colleague in the charity-running space, more than $160 million was raised in 2025 through charities at just four marathons: Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

My argument then—and now—is simple: what if the running industry identified its own cause and encouraged runners to address that issue alongside the others they support? Childhood obesity remains the most obvious and urgent candidate, especially in light of the latest JAMA data.

Today, charity fundraising in running works through peer-to-peer platforms, discounted entries, and corporate sponsorships. The generosity is real. The structure is absent.

The Fragmented Giant

The problem isn’t goodwill; it’s fragmentation. Peer-to-peer fundraising is decentralization by design. Every runner is on their own platform. There’s no coordination, no aggregation, nothing that leverages the collective power of the millions who self-identify as runners.

Years ago, a Coca-Cola executive explained it to me plainly: “I’d love to sponsor running events. But we don’t buy thousands—we buy millions. You have millions, but you’ve chosen not to aggregate them. I can’t have 400 race directors call me. Send one person, and I’ll buy.”

Running is a collection of one-off successes that leave no structure behind. Every event is its own universe. Barricades come down, the clock resets, and nothing leads to anything else. No shared ladder. No shared identity. No shared power.

Heroes and Systems

When a close friend died in 2007, we held a fundraiser at the elementary school his grandchildren attended. We brought in elite runners, staged relays, obstacle courses, and other fun track-oriented events. At the end, we asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Some said doctors. Some said athletes. A few said Olympians—because “everybody wants your autograph.”

On that playground, aspiration mattered as much as money.

That’s what heroes do. They change what kids believe is possible. But heroes don’t reliably emerge from siloed events. They emerge from systems—systems that create continuity, visibility, and meaning.

Right now, running shares venues, not purpose.

Roughly 50 million Americans self-identify as runners. That number alone should stop the conversation. So should the money the sport already generates.

The Counterargument

My colleague, with deep experience in charity relations for major road races, offered an important counterpoint: each charity has its own mission. Funds raised are directed toward fighting cancer, improving animal welfare, preserving the environment, advancing medical research, and supporting children through organizations like the YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Make-A-Wish, and Ronald McDonald House.

Many of these organizations already promote healthy lifestyles through their own programs. That work is real and valuable.

But that diversity of purpose brings me back to the same conclusion I reached nearly two decades ago.

The Reciprocity Solution

What if 5 percent of what is currently raised through running-related charity efforts were reinvested back into the sport itself—into youth programs, school-based running, and community initiatives that give the sport shape, visibility, and continuity?

This is not a critique of charities; it’s a recognition of fragmentation.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was nearly $173 billion as of 2019—a figure that has only grown. Against that backdrop, a 5 percent reinvestment looks less like a sacrifice and more like a bargain.

Yes, this would mean redistributing a small portion of what’s raised. But in doing so, we’d be building the stage on which that fundraising could actually accelerate. A stronger sport produces more participants, more events, more engagement—and ultimately, more money flowing to the causes people care about in the first place.

Right now, running raises enormous sums and leaves little behind. A modest reinvestment—baked into race–charity partnerships and administered through existing bodies like RRCA or Running USA—would change that.

It wouldn’t solve everything, of course. But it would create continuity where none presently exists. It would allow heroes to emerge, pathways to form, and kids to see something worth aspiring to—something that doesn’t disappear when race weekend is over.

With a new influx in road race participation driven by Gen Z, we have what amounts to a contributing solution to a national health problem.

We have the economic power to deploy it.

What we’ve lacked is the willingness to act collectively.

Which brings us back to the same question, only louder now:

When is enough enough? What, exactly, will rouse the sleeping giant?

And if not us—inside the one sport that actually works—then who, exactly, are we waiting for?

END