On the heels of his failed effort to combat rising rates of obesity by banning the sale of large sugary drinks, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is tackling a new public health initiative: dissuading Americans, and especially youth, from purchasing tobacco products.

Bloomberg is pushing a proposal that would ban stores from displaying cigarettes, which would make New York the first city in the nation to attempt to curb smoking by keeping tobacco products out of sight. The initiative wouldn’t prevent stores from advertising cigarettes or displaying the prices of their products — but it could significantly change the atmosphere in the city’s small corner stores. As the New York Times puts it, “In many of these stores, cigarettes are like wallpaper, the backdrop that every customer sees when going to the register to pay.”

But, considering the fact that tobacco kills an estimated 7,000 New Yorkers each year, Bloomberg doesn’t want customers to be exposed to that backdrop any longer. “Young people are targets of marketing, and the availability of cigarettes and this legislation will help prevent another generation from the ill health and shorter life expectancy that comes with smoking,” the mayor explained at a press briefing to unveil his new proposal.

Bloomberg has been a big proponent of anti-smoking initiatives, including public awareness campaigns and increased cigarette taxes, during his time in office. Those efforts have paid off. Smoking rates in the city have plummeted from 21.5 percent in 2002 to 14.8 percent in 2011. Despite the model that New York City provides for the rest of the nation, however, other states haven’t followed suit — austerity policies have led states across the country to slash funding for their smoking cessation programs over the past decade, even when those programs have proved to be effective.

Two former Louisiana state Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) secretaries have a message for Gov. Bobby Jindal (R): accept federal funding for taking part in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, or see taxpayer money go to funding other states’ expansions while low-income Louisianans suffer.

Fred Cerise and David Hood, the latter of whom is a Republican who actually succeeded Jindal — a former DHH head himself — after Jindal left to become president of the University of Louisiana public schools system in 1998, urged the governor to join the growing ranks of Republican state officials who have embraced Medicaid expansion in a Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper ad. The advertisement states, “Medicaid expansion offers a path to regular access to health care for working adults.”

The ad goes on to note that forgoing the expansion won’t just deprive low-income Louisiana residents of crucial health coverage, but is fiscally irresponsible, too: “If Louisiana refuses to participate, our share of the money that pays for this program will be used to support the Medicaid expansion in other states and our low-income residents will continue to lack access to care.” Multiple studies, including a comprehensive Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, have shown that states expanding Medicaid will receive massive federal funding for very little state input.

Jindal has a decidedly poor record when it comes to safety net health care entitlements, instituting massive cuts to state programs that assist vulnerable groups such as poor first-time moms and low-income HIV patients. Jindal has also been a staunch Obamacare critic and has so far explicitly ruled out expanding Medicaid — however, there have been recent reports that he and other skeptical GOP state leaders might be open to a modified expansion along the lines of the unique deal struck between Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) and the Obama Administration.

Advocates for the poor and hospital associations have been pressing Republican leaders to accept unusually generous federal funding to expand Medicaid, warning officials that providers might buckle under the weight of uncompensated care costs without a larger pool of insured low-income Americans who can actually afford to pay their medical bills. Expanding Medicaid faces an uphill battle even in states where GOP governors have embraced it, as they must still convince skeptical lawmakers in their own party to go along with the plan.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) may have lost this round of sparring over his proposed limits on sugary drinks, but another of his public health initiatives, requiring chain restaurants to post nutritional information on menus, seems promising. According to a new study in the research journal Appetite, people are most affected by menus listing not only calorie content of a menu item but also how long they would have to walk in order to burn it off.

An online survey presented 802 people with one of four menus: some saw just the calorie count, some were given the calories and the amount of time it would take to burn off the meal, others saw the calories and the distance needed to walk it off, and some were given no nutritional information at all. People who received no nutritional information ordered the most caloric meals, while people who saw the distance they needed to walk to burn it off ordered meals that were 200 calories lighter:

People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance. Study participants ordered meals adding up to averages of 927 calories and 916 calories from menus with only calorie information or calorie information plus minutes walking, respectively, although the differences between these two totals were not statistically significant.

Other studies on menu labeling have proven inconclusive, though some evidence indicates restaurants modify recipes and portion sizes in order to post a lower calorie count. This new study, however, suggests that the problem is not necessarily customers’ apathy to their health but lack of context in which to read calorie counts on menus. A menu that directly translates calories into physical activity may be the key to changing eating habits.

A more detailed menu labeling rule could have a huge impact on the national obesity crisis. The average American eats restaurant food 5.8 times per week, ingesting a third of their daily calories from eating out.

Since fall 2011, New Yorkers have already been exposed to posters warning they would need to walk 3 miles to burn off the calories in a 20-ounce soda as part of a public health campaign. Restaurants are already required to post the calories of each dish by 21 state and local laws. As part of the Affordable Care Act, the rest of the nation should soon start seeing calorie counts at restaurants with 20 or more chains. While the restaurant industry vehemently opposed New York’s original menu labeling law in 2006, they have since come around to support a national menu labeling standard. The FDA, however, has dragged its feet on releasing the rules.