Initiate, manage and evaluate multi-stakeholder interventions: ECHO-zones
Introductory Speakers: Dr. Frank Bloomfield, Professor, Director Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, Dr. Loretta Warnakulasuriya, Project Coordinator, Lions Project, Negombo, Sri Lanka.
About the workshop:
The WHO report Ending Childhood Obesity calls for integrated intervention strategies and approaches to curb the development of childhood obesity. Creating "ECHO-zones" is an attempt to convert the recommendations in the WHO report to into concrete actions. “ECHO” stands for Ending CHildhood Obesity and “zone” refers to a geographical area, where the aim is to prevent and treat childhood obesity in a multi-facetted way. This involves physical activity, food products and eating behaviour as well as environmental and psycho-social factors. The aim is to bring together relevant actors and stakeholders within a geographical area to decide how to bring about change for children and adolescents. The focus is on prevention, but also on treatment of already overweight or obese children and adolescents. This is an ambition to end the childhood obesity epidemic with a systems approach.
The focus areas for the workshop are to define conditions for:
- An ECHO-zone
- Initiating an ECHO-zone
- Networking between ECHO-zones
- Evaluating ECHO-zones
Workshop prepared by: Professor Peter Bergsten, Department of Medical Cell Biology Uppsala University, Dr. Anders Forslund, Associate Professor and Marie Dahlbom, Research Nurse, Study Coordinator, Uppsala University Hospital, Department of Women´s and Children´s Health, Uppsala University.