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Pan-European project aims to halt adolescent obesity

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Knut-Inge Klepp

The European Commission is providing 9.5 million euros to launch the 5-year CO-CREATE project designed to tackle rising adolescent obesity rates, according to a press release from the World Obesity Federation.

“Obesity represents a complex challenge with multiple causes,” Knut-Inge Klepp, MPH, PhD, executive director of the division of mental and physical health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told Endocrine Today. “For many years, this complex problem has been attempted to be solved with simple, single-policy measures. This approach has not been successful. In CO-CREATE we therefore take a systems approach, trying to analyze and understand how a complex set of factors interact and influence the environment in which adolescents grow up.”

A consortium of 14 research and advocacy groups in six European countries plus Australia, South Africa and the United States have joined to form CO-CREATE, which will be in effect from 2018 to 2023. University research departments, national public health institutions and civil society organizations will also be involved. Most crucially, though, the project will work directly with adolescents, recognizing them as the next generation of educators and policy-makers, according to the release.

CO-CREATE envisions a future where the rise in adolescent obesity will come to a halt before 2025, Klepp told Endocrine Today. More specifically, program organizers seek to address disparities between socio-economic groups by reducing the rates of obesity among adolescents from those on the lower end of the economic spectrum to the present-day levels of those in the highest socio-economic groups within the same countries.

“Our hope is that the project significantly will contribute to the fulfillment of this vision by contributing new knowledge regarding how to involve young people, build evidence for effective policies and how to advocate for their implementation,” Klepp said. – by Melissa J. Webb

For more information:

Knut-Inge Klepp, MPH, PhD, can be reached at knut-inge.klepp@fhi.no.