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tor of a White House initiative to reduce childhood obesity.
• Preschoolers who are overweight or obese are five times more likely than other children to be heavy as adults, which means greater risks of high cholesterol, high blood sugar, asthma and even mental health problems.
• Tuesday's study used height and weight measurements from nearly 12 million low-income children in 40 states. The data was collected from 2008 through 2011.
• Most of the children ages 2 to 4 were enrolled in the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides food vouchers and other services.
• It's harder to get national data on preschoolers of more affluent families, so it's not clear if the trend applies to all young children. But experts note that low-income kids tend to be heavier.
• "If you're going to look at the problem of obesity early in childhood, the group at highest risk are low-income kids. That's what makes this data so valuable for understanding trends in this major public health problem," said Dr. Matthew Davis, a University of Michigan researcher who tracks health policy and children's health issues.
• The biggest declines were in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey and South Dakota. Each saw their obesity numbers fall at least 1 percentage point.
• Other states showing improvement: California, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Washington. A substantial decline was also seen in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• "These signs of progress tell a clear story: we can reverse the childhood obesity epidemic. It isn't some kind of unstoppable force," said Dr. James S. Marks, in a statement. He's senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy that supports programs to tackle obesity.
• Despite the improvements, the numbers are still disappointing. Hawaii was the best, with about 9 percent of low-income preschoolers estimated to be obese in 2011. Even with some progress, California was worst, at nearly 17 percent.
• Ten states were not included; some had changed how they track height and weight. One of the missing states is Texas, which has one of the largest populations of low-income children and is known to have a significant problem with childhood obesity.
• Of the remaining 40 states, 18 showed at least slight improvement and 19 states and Puerto Rico had no significant change. Three states -- Colorado, Pennsylvania and Tennessee -- increased.

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