The Healthy Caribbean Coalition has launched their Childhood Obesity Prevention Petition as part of their Civil Society Action Plan for 2017-2019.

The aim of the petition is to raise awareness of childhood obesity in the Caribbean and to influence the region’s leaders to champion and implement critical policies that will improve the health of our children, reduce childhood obesity and prevent the associated non-communicable diseases.

The Healthy Caribbean Coalition plans to present their petition at the CARICOM Heads of Governments Conference in Jamaica in July, which presents the perfect opportunity to raise this issue.

With 1 in 3 children in the Caribbean being overweight or obese urgent action is needed and therefore the HCC needs your help. Please add your voice to the HCC’s call for action to be taken on childhood obesity by signing their petition and encouraging your contacts to do so too.

We can all make a difference and improve our children’s health, and this petition is just the first step.

Thank you for your support. For more information on this campaign and to sign the petition, please visit: www.healthycaribbean.org/yourvoicematters

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

Croydon CCG in collaboration with Croydon Council are hosting a Healthy Weight workshop on July 26^th at 11am to 1pm.

It is being held at Bernard Weatherill  House on the Ground Floor in the Community Space rooms with lunch and refreshments provided.

The aim of the workshop is to raise awareness about healthy weight topics within Croydon and to invite stakeholders, patients, clinicians and front line staff, to talk about how we can build the best services for Croydon residents.

The workshop aims to cover the following topics;

• Healthy weight within Croydon
• Identify priorities to promote healthy weight
• Raising awareness of healthy weight initiatives within the community
• Gain feedback from Patients and Clinicians on current services and how we can improve them

You can book a place on EventBrite or by emailing mark.darocha@croydonccg.nhs.uk

A new report about the burden of obesity in the UK, has delivered shocking predictions about future cancer rates. Based on today’s trends the report predicts that nearly 3 in 4 adults will be overweight or obese by 2035 and this would lead to an additional 670,000 cases of cancer.

Rising obesity may lead to increased cancer rates for several reasons. High amounts of fat in the body change the levels of hormones such as oestrogen and testosterone which may raise the risk of cancer. Raised levels of fat can also alter the quantities of chemical messengers in the body and possibly have cancer related effects.

 Black people are at already very high risk for particular forms of cancer.  Black men have the highest risk of developing prostate cancer amongst all other ethnicities. Young Black women have worse breast cancer outcomes compared with white women.

The report (co-authored by Cancer Research UK and the UK Health forum) also suggests a variety of strategies which may help reduce obesity rates and consequently cancer rates. These recommendations appear to be sensible and practical but may not be sufficient for members of the UK population at high risk of obesity e.g. Black men and women. According to a 2014 report, Black men and women have the highest rates of obesity in England. Furthermore, it has been reported that Black and other ethnic minority children have higher rates of obesity when compared to White children in the UK. Further investigation into the obesity challenges faced by the Black community is needed.

You can find more information about the studies here, here, and here.

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.

Researchers at the National Institute of Ageing have published the results of their study exploring the relationship between weight at midlife and Alzheimer’s Disease.

In their study they found that being obese or overweight at midlife (at age 50) may put people at increased risk of developing early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. They found that for each unit of increase in BMI at age 50 accelerated onset of Alzheimer’s by nearly 7 months in those who developed the condition.

Although more work is needed to confirm this relationship between body weight and Alzheimer’s, this work suggests that maintaining a healthy weight could be an option for delaying the development of Alzheimer’s.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have published data from the Yorkshire Health Study which has found that obese people fall into one of six categories and to address obesity strategies should be tailored according to which group a person falls into.

The six obesity groups were identified as: young males who were heavy drinkers, middle aged individuals who were unhappy and anxious, older people who despite living with physical health conditions were happy, younger healthy females, older affluent healthy adults, and individuals with very poor health.

The lead researcher for this study, Dr Mark Green said:

“Our research showed that those in the groups that we identified are likely to need very different services, and will respond very differently to different health promotion policies.

“In the future, we hope that GPs will keep in mind these six groups when offering advice to their patients.”
Researchers explained that what would need to be done to address obesity in the different groups would be to encourage alcohol reduction in young males, while for middle aged individuals who are unhappy and anxious an intervention involving increasing exercise mixed with psycho-social counselling could be beneficial. Young healthy females may not need any intervention, researchers said, as their health problems would be corrected naturally on their own. For those in the poorest health group the study showed advice surrounding exercise may not be reasonable and much more modest goals may be needed. For the affluent healthy elderly weight loss could be a priority.

This study is useful as it helps us understand specific, effective steps that can be taken to tackle obesity.

A brisk 20 minute walk each day could be enough to reduce an individual’s risk of early death, according to new research. The study of over 334,000 European men and women found that twice as many deaths may be attributable to lack of physical activity compared with the number of deaths attributable to obesity, but that just a modest increase in physical activity could have significant health benefits. – See more at http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/lack-of-exercise-responsible-for-twice-as-many-deaths-as-obesity#sthash.hSDv1MLp.dpuf

Physical inactivity has been consistently associated with an increased risk of early death, as well as being associated with a greater risk of diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Although it may also contribute to an increased body mass index (BMI) and obesity, the association with early death is independent of an individual’s BMI.

To measure the link between physical inactivity and premature death, and its interaction with obesity, researchers analysed data from 334,161 men and women across Europe participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Study. Between 1992 and 2000, the researchers measured height, weight and waist circumference, and used self-assessment to measure levels of physical activity. The participants were then followed up over 12 years, during which 21,438 participants died. The results are published today in the American Journal of Clinical Exercise.

The researchers found that the greatest reduction in risk of premature death occurred in the comparison between inactive and moderately inactive groups, judged by combining activity at work with recreational activity; just under a quarter (22.7%) of participants were categorised as inactive, reporting no recreational activity in combination with a sedentary occupation. The authors estimate that doing exercise equivalent to just a 20-minute brisk walk each day – burning between 90 and 110 kcal (‘calories’) – would take an individual from the inactive to the moderately inactive group and reduce their risk of premature death by between 16-30%. The impact was greatest amongst normal weight individuals, but even those with higher BMI saw a benefit.

Using the most recent available data on deaths in Europe the researchers estimate that 337,000 of the 9.2 million deaths amongst European men and women were attributable to obesity (classed as a BMI greater than 30): however, double this number of deaths (676,000) could be attributed to physical inactivity.

Professor Ulf Ekelund from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, who led the study, says: “This is a simple message: just a small amount of physical activity each day could have substantial health benefits for people who are physically inactive. Although we found that just 20 minutes would make a difference, we should really be looking to do more than this – physical activity has many proven health benefits and should be an important part of our daily life.”

Professor Nick Wareham, Director of the MRC Unit, adds: “Helping people to lose weight can be a real challenge, and whilst we should continue to aim at reducing population levels of obesity, public health interventions that encourage people to make small but achievable changes in physical activity can have significant health benefits and may be easier to achieve and maintain.”

Reference

Ekelund, U et al. Activity and all-cause mortality across levels of overall and abdominal adiposity in European men and women: the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Study (EPIC). American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; 14 Jan 2015

This article was written by Cambridge University and was first published on 14^th January 2015 here. We have used this content as stipulated by its Creative Commons Licence.

This week, from 12^th – 18^th January, is National Obesity Awareness Week in the UK. During NOAW campaigners are urging the public to join their National New Year’s Resolution to tackle obesity by making a commitment to make a small lifestyle change – such as going for a regular walk or run, or eating a healthier diet.

Research has shown that black African women in the UK have the highest prevalence of obesity? The same is true for African American women. Let’s turn this around.

During NOAW The Lake Foundation will be sharing a range of health tips on our social media platforms so that we can turn these statistics around. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.