Mobilization of Public Support for Policy Actions to Prevent Obesity
2015
This series paper outlines a need to overhaul current strategies and reprioritizations of resources of public support for policy actions to prevent obesity. Public mobilization is needed to enact obesity-prevention policies and to mitigate reaction against their implementation.
Strategies to increase popular demand for obesity-prevention policies include refinement and streamlining of public information, identification of effective obesity frames for each population, strengthening of media advocacy, building of citizen protest and engagement, and development of a receptive political environment with change agents embedded across organizations and sectors.
Long-term support and investment in collaboration between diverse stakeholders to create shared value is also important. The shift from a top-down to a combined and integrated bottom-up and top-down approach would need an overhaul of current strategies and reprioritization of resources.
This paper is a part of The Lancet Series: Obesity 2015, which explores how food environments can facilitate unhealthy eating, exploiting people’s biological, psychological, social, and economic vulnerabilities.
Mobilization of Public Support for Policy Actions to Prevent Obesity
Source:
Huan TT-K, Cawley JH, Ashe M et al. Mobilisation of Public Support for Policy Actions to Prevent Obesity. The Lancet 2015; 385 (9985): 2422–2431. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61743-8