The Healthy Caribbean Coalition in collaboration with the NCD Alliance have released an  action plan for preventing childhood obesity in the Caribbean. This action plan is based on a number of frameworks developed by organisations around the world to ensure consistency. The plan aims to foster a collaborative approach to tackling childhood obesity with recommendations for civil society working in partnership with governments and the private sector.

This action plan is of utmost importance as a third of children in the Caribbean are overweight or obese. Children who are overweight or obese are at an increased risk of being overweight or obese adults and of developing a non-communicable disease (NCD) later in life.

The Priorities of the Plan

Rates of childhood obesity are increasing in the Caribbean; this needs to be addressed to improve the health of the Caribbean community. If left unchecked the Caribbean will see a huge increase in NCDs leading to avoidable ill-health and premature death. The Healthy Caribbean Coalition’s action plan aims to address this. Their plan focuses on seven priority areas. These include:

Trade and fiscal policies e.g. taxation of unhealthy food

Nutrition literacy e.g. mandatory front-of-package nutrition labelling

Early childhood nutrition e.g. interventions related to breastfeeding and complementary foods

Marketing of healthy and unhealthy foods and drinks e.g. banning of marketing of unhealthy foods and drinks to children

School and community based interventions e.g. mandatory physical activity in schools  

Resource mobilisation for interventions addressing childhood obesity

Strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation: e.g monitoring progress through the use of the CSO Childhood Obesity Prevention Scorecard

Next Steps

The Healthy Caribbean Coalition team, based in Barbados, will take the lead on implementing this action plan and will form a regional Steering Committee with members coming from the around the Caribbean representing the private sector, government and civil society organisations. They will also form a civil society organisation action network for childhood obesity prevention who will work on promoting relevant policies and interventions.

We’re really happy to see this action plan published. It provides a good foundation on which to start work on the prevention of childhood obesity in the Caribbean and we look forward to getting involved in this work.

More Information

For more information please visit the HCC website here, download the action plan below or email  hcc@healthycaribbean.org

This week the UK’s Health Committee published their report on childhood obesity setting out what action needs to be taken to tackle this ever increasing problem.  The report states that the scale of the problem requires “bold and urgent action from the Government.”

From the report we learn that a fifth of children in the UK are overweight or obese when they begin school and by the time they leave primary school a third will be overweight or obese. They also noted that deprived children are twice as likely to be obese than the least deprived children and therefore obesity is a significant contributor to health inequality.

The report also highlights the cost of obesity. Treating obesity and its consequences costs the NHS £5.1bn every year. Obesity is the main risk factor for a number of disease including diabetes and the cost of diabetes to the NHS is  £8.8bn a year.

Through their research into this area, the committee found that there are very few interventions aimed at overweight or obese children. They state that the evidence shows that healthy living campaigns tend to help those who are already making healthy choices and are not reaching those that need them.

The health committee have made a number of recommendations that focus on changing our food environment because evidence suggests this is where the most attention is needed. Their nine recommendations include:
–  Strong controls on price promotions of unhealthy food and drink
–  Tougher controls on marketing and advertising of unhealthy food and drink
–  A centrally led reformulation programme to reduce sugar in food and drink
–  A sugary drinks tax on full sugar soft drinks, in order to help change behaviour, with all proceeds targeted to help those children at greatest risk of obesity
–  Labelling of single portions of products with added sugar to show sugar content in teaspoons
–  Improved education and information about diet
–  Universal school food standards
–  Greater powers for local authorities to tackle the environment leading to obesity
–   Early intervention to offer help to families of children affected by obesity and further research into the most effective interventions

We are in support of the above recommendations as obesity is a significant problem in the black community and by taking these actions we can begin to change our community’s behaviour and improve our health.

You can download the full report below.