DC808 caught up with state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz in downtown Washington on Friday. 

Dela Cruz participated in the Leadership for Healthy Communities summit on obesity prevention. He attended the Washington conference on a scholarship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (It’s worth pointing out that the foundation — not Hawaii taxpayers — paid for his trip, he said.) 

The purpose of the conference was to connect leaders for a discussion about fighting obesity, and Dela Cruz said he is eager to share what he learned with other state leaders. One city that provided inspiration was Oklahoma City, which Dela Cruz said he learned about from Mayor Mick Corbett. 

“In Oklahoma, they put this city on a diet in every aspect,” Dela Cruz told DC808. “A lot of it was land use: How they designed their community, redeveloped their community. When you design a city, or a main street or a community, it has to deal with walking and biking, not a car. They had people put in bike stalls instead of parking lots. With rail, hopefully you have the kind of development where people walk to the station or walk from the station.”

Earlier this week, DC808 reviewed a study that found that Hawaii’s overweight 17-to-24-year-olds would have to together lose 1.5 million pounds to reach healthy weights. Read more about that study.