World Obesity Day 2024 – Obesity & Youth: Young people catalyzing change

Global Youth-led webinar

When: Monday, 4th March 2024, 14:00 – 15:00 hrs CET 
Organizers: UNICEF, WHO and the World Obesity Federation 

Background

In 2022, overweight affect around 37 million children under 5 globally, and over 390 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were overweight, including 160 million who were living with obesity – 75% of who live in low- and middle-income countries. This reflects a food system that is failing to deliver nutritious diets for children and health systems that fail to address obesity prior to individuals presenting with co-morbidities. In many contexts, this situation is further exacerbated by inequality, including financial, social, and structural drivers of obesity – from pervasive marketing to poor healthcare coverage – meaning that many children around the world are exposed to environments that do not promote health but instead encourage weight gain. The prejudice and stigma that many young people affected by overweight and obesity experience in their day-to-day lives also harm their mental health and self-esteem. 

World Obesity Day – 4 March – is a unified day of action that calls for a cohesive, cross-sector response to the obesity crisis. This year’s campaign theme is ‘Let’s Talk About Obesity And…‘.  We want to leverage the power of World Obesity Day to start cross-cutting conversations. Looking at health, youth, and the world around us to see how we can address obesity together. As such, for World Obesity Day 2024, the Global Obesity Coalition – consisting of UNICEF, WHO, and the World Obesity Federation – is hosting a global youth-led webinar to unlock conversations about how this topic affects the lives of young people around the world and the concrete change young people are demanding. The online global event will serve as a moment for those decision-makers working in UN agencies, academia, civil society, and government to listen up. 

Objectives

• To receive a stock-take of the global obesity crisis, how it’s affecting young people, and how young people can get involved with the WHO Acceleration Plan to Stop Obesity 
• To hear and understand the lived realities of young people in a diverse set of countries. 
• To investigate what it will take to spark a global youth movement to address these realities. 
• To establish what young people are asking for, and how to deliver. 

Chair

• Pierre (Kevin) Cooke, Jr  (he/him) – SUN Lead Group Member, HCC Technical Advisor (Barbados) 

Speakers

• WHO Youth Council: Ishu Kataria (she/her) –Chair, NCDs Working Group, WHO Youth Council & Senior Public Health Researcher, RTI International(India) 
• WHO Experts: Francesco Branca (he/him) – Director of the Department of Nutrition & Food Safety, WHO