Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

Chapter 25
The next steps
Given the failure of any government to date to address
the major structural changes needed to counteract
obesity, one can reasonably ask: How it is possible to
generate the political will to induce substantial changes
in government policy? Clearly a combination of measures
is needed.
First, a focus on highly visible problems with an
emotional trigger is useful, such as the rise in childhood
obesity, because this demands urgent government
action. Second, the focus on the marketing issue
is also politically valuable because it invokes major
parental and public concern. Third, economic analyses
are crucial, as was demonstrated in the UK response
to predictions of the economic implications of obesity.
The obesity community must now develop these economic
analyses as effective tools for global use. Fourth,
ministries of health cannot be the sole focus for influencing
the agenda, as IOTF has repeatedly found.
Thus, through the Global Alliance initiative, the
IOTF, using personal contacts at the highest level, has
managed to help introduce obesity and the prevention
of chronic diseases into the next five-year Economic
and Social Development Plan for Thailand, with the
strong backing of the Director General of the
Economic and Social Development Board of Thailand.
Similarly IOTF was recently invited to address the
16 Caribbean presidents and prime ministers on the
economic and health burden on the Caribbean populations.
This was only achieved through long - standing
personal contacts with a key individual, Sir George
Alleyne, ex - Director of the Pan American Health
Organization (PAHO), who was trusted by the leaders
because they already had experience of his wisdom.
Plans are now being devised locally on the basis of
preliminary proposals but these, again, will need very
careful monitoring if they are to be effective rather
than simply politically promoting an image of action.
Conclusion
Fundamental to creating a climate for action is the
need to ensure the capacity to deliver a sustained
message, perhaps over many years. While many civil
society groups hope for swift results, history suggests
that health issues that do not convey an immediate
and potentially fatal threat and which, like food
quality, are seemingly under individual control, do
not have staying power in terms of political priorities.
As with smoking, there is a need for a medical consensus
and an emotive focus combined with economic
arguments, together with explicit proposals that will
allow heads of government or finance ministers to
change their policies on the basis of some definite
political gain. Health professionals cannot afford to
relax in their efforts to bring home to the public, politicians
and producers the need for fundamental and
long - term improvements in the nutritional quality of
the whole range of products in the food supply chain
if the obesity epidemic and consequent chronic diseases
are to be brought under control.
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