European Youth Tackling Obesity will involve partners across England, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic developing peer-led social marketing campaigns in a range of settings to promote healthy eating and physical activity amongst young people aged 13-16 who are vulnerable to obesity. With the potential to reach over a million young people, the campaign will transcend cultural barriers to improve motivation among young people to live healthier lifestyles, contributing to a reduction in childhood obesity amongst the four EU Member States involved in the project.

The project represents a new partnership borne from a shared concern over rising levels of obesity, and a lack of innovative and targeted work to tackle obesity amongst adolescents as compared to younger children. There is a recognised need to apply learning from successful social marketing campaigns to address this health problem. The project will help reduce the modifiable causes of obesity amongst disadvantaged young people and contribute to a reduction in the associated negative outcomes.
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In all EU Member states (MS), the high level of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is of particular concern. In the EU, around 1 in 3 children 6-9 years old were overweight or obese in 2010, a sharp rise in prevalence despite numerous MS or EU initiatives.Physical inactivity and poor diet from birth (and even in utero) are important determinants of adiposity leading to overweight and obesity. They are also independently associated with various non-communicable disease risk factors leading to the main pathologies European populations are suffering from, including detrimental psychosocial outcomes. Overweight and obesity represent an economic burden with up to 7% of EU health budgets spent each year directly on diseases linked to obesity, with more indirect costs resulting from lost productivity. Nutritional problems and physical inactivity need to be addressed in an integrated way so as to promote healthier environments, to make the healthy option the easiest option and to inform and empower families.Within the general frame of the EU Action plan on childhood obesity 2014-2020, the JA’s general objective is to contribute to halting the rise in overweight and obesity in children and adolescents by 2020. Through the, identification, selection and sharing of best data and practices within the 25 countries involved, the JA will allow for : to advocate based on an estimation and forecast of economic cost of overweight and obesity; to improve the implementation of integrated interventions to promote nutrition and physical activity for pregnant women, families with young children; to improve actions within school settings; and to increase the use of nutritional information on foods by public health authorities, stakeholders and families for nutrition policy purposes. The JA will reinforce the links between national nutrition and physical activity policies initiated by the EU Strategy on nutrition, overweight and obesity-related health issues.
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The project is expected to contribute to the prevention of obesity and weight problems by stimulating food innovation and reformulation among small and medium-sized food service providers, thereby offering a wider choice of healthy products to citizens and thus ultimately leading to changes in food habits. The project will add nutritional control criteria to the classical HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) system. The result is the so-called HANCP (hazard analysis and nutritional control points) system.
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PATHE is designed to build on the infrastructure of national associations of physical activity that currently represent over 70 million Europeans. The two overall objectives of PATHE are:
support and strengthen ‘Sport for all’ organisations in the development of their own health and physical activity promotion campaigns and initiatives;
actively implement the EC public health strategy (European dimension) into existing and planned national grassroots initiatives.
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The project is to study innovative approaches, such as industry involvement and public-private partnership initiatives, to counteract obesity and overweight in Europe, particularly through reformulation of manufactured food.
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