Joint U.S.-Mexico Workshop on Preventing Obesity in Children and Youth of Mexican Origin Summary (2007) / Chapter Skim
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4 Summary and Final Remarks
4 Summary and Final Remarks
Pages 63-76
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From page 63... ...
Mechanisms for collaborative training of human resources can ensure the continuity of initiatives. The joint search for funding resources will also be beneficial; Martorell also suggested forming a small group to design an action plan for identifying potential mechanisms and funding resources.
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From page 64... ...
Different circumstances will require carefully crafted messages depending on the communication means; for example, the nature of a message from a public health authority should be different from a more creative health message embedded in a TV show. Workshop discussions, noted Koplan, conveyed how the profound differences in systems and cultures between Mexico and the United States could serve as lessons and result in synergistic, greater collaborative opportunities among different sectors and countries.
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From page 65... ...
through a group of experts as part of a broad task addressing diet, nutrition, and chronic disease prevention. The evidence on factors responsible for obesity were carefully evaluated and were the basis for the global strategy on diet, physical activity, and health approved by the World Health Assembly in 2004 (Mexico was a participant)
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From page 66... ...
The roles of the various sectors were discussed by experts representing public and private sectors in Mexico and the United States. Participants discussed that among the public sector, the healthcare sector should assume responsibility for assuring a healthy environment by leading in the development of a national prevention plan and coordinating interventions with other relevant sectors.
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From page 67... ...
Binational collaborations could include sharing media-based health promotion content from radio, television, Internet, and printed media to reach Mexican and MexicanAmerican children; establishing guidelines for appropriate marketing targeted at children and youth; and sharing educational materials adapted for Mexican culture. Furthermore, binational collaborations would be invaluable to (1)
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From page 68... ...
The issue is that in the results of the National Nutrition Surveys, the first one in 1988, malnutrition was seen as the largest public health problem, but the obesity problem was increasing. Ten, eleven years later, with the second National Nutrition Survey, the obesity problem was discovered in all its magnitude, a problem that grew impressively, more than in the United States at any moment, and which turned on all the alarms.
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From page 69... ...
We have started to work on the deficiency of micronutrients when the other problem shows up, and we still have not done anything. If we will do an evaluation of it on the economic impact, along with the other riders of the apocalypses that accompany it -- hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes -- then I think that we will realize that these four riders are imposing big amounts of money in the public and private healthcare sectors and lots of suffering in human beings, of course.
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From page 70... ...
Certainly the one you have chosen for this seminar is a top priority. It is a silent epidemic, probably one of the clearest examples of the double burden of disease and risk factors.
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From page 71... ...
In the topic of obesity, we have two main policy instruments: the first is health protection, the other is health promotion. Health protection we interpreted as the set of tools to protect people from passive exposure to different risks, particularly regulatory mechanisms and health promotion to enhance or diminish exposure when that exposure is active.
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From page 72... ...
We used to have an area in the center bureaucracy of the Secretary responsible for generating risks regarding air pollution, water pollution, food contamination of various sorts, so we regulatory role for almost everything because almost everything can be a risk to health. Now we have an independent, autonomous agency, a little bit like the Food and Drug Administration, except it also has elements of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
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From page 73... ...
We have formed a special fund to promote health-promoting activities in schools, including now tobacco- and smoke-free schools, and part of the issues, there is nutritional attention, improving the nutritional quality of the food sold in the schools. Those are a few of the things, but I think we have a long way to go, particularly on the health promotion, which is actually the toughest part because it involves changing perceptions, changing behaviors, and part of the problem of the perception, is the risk perception, the fact that people tend to have very distorted assessments of relative risks.
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From page 74... ...
I had the chance to talk during lunch, I know they had to leave, both, with Diana Bonta and Xochitl Castaneda, which have been very instrumental; in 2001 we have had a week in October, perfectly synchronized between Mexico and the United States for a great number of health promotion activities. Last year was the fourth year we have done Binational Health Weeks and it was present in 33 states of the United States, 33 Mexican states, and now it is even in two provinces of Canada as well.
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From page 75... ...
2005. Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance.
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