A systems approach to policymaking for obesity prevention

Policymaking for obesity prevention is essential, but policymaking for obesity is complex and challenging for a number of reasons. The obesity epidemic is in itself a complex issue, with contributing factors at multiple levels of society (individual to global), across many scales (genes to environment), and involving numerous players (consumer to policymaker). To promote healthier diets and reduce obesity, World Cancer Research Fund International’s NOURISHING framework outlines ten policy areas where action is needed across three domains: food environment, food system and behaviour change communication. Using NOURISHING, this session will describe the fundamental need to apply a systems approach to policy development and implementation related to obesity, emphasizing the need for multisectoral action and policy coherence to promote healthy diets through the lifecourse. Recognizing that excessive sugar consumption is one factor promoting overweight and obesity, this session will describe examples of effective and feasible policy actions available to governments to help reduce sugar intake by influencing the 4 A’s of sugar consumption: availability, affordability, acceptability and awareness. Monitoring the longterm impact of obesity prevention policy is challenging (e.g. a decrease in obesity levels at a population level), making it important to monitor the intermediary effects of a comprehensive package of policies tackling obesity (e.g. a policy’s effect on the 4 A’s of sugar consumption). This session will also feature successes, failures, and lessons learned from implemented policies in countries around the world.