Obesity-free children communities

Childhood obesity has become one of the most alarming public health problems globally. The number of school-age children and adolescents with obesity has risen by 10-fold in the last 40 years. In urban areas in developing countries, the main causes associated to this condition are the limited access to healthy food and the lack of awareness in the family nucleus and communities. We propose the creation of an interactive platform that contains data related to risk factors and relevant variables about the living conditions to facilitate exposure to healthier environments. This can be done through participatory action of the community members (families, schools and primary care units) to facilitate decision making by stakeholders. Preventive actions will allow to decrease comorbidities and chronics diseases later in life for millions of people worldwide. 

Obesity risk factors include genetics, metabolism, eating and physical activity behaviours, pollution exposure among others. Through policy making it is only possible to modify children’s environment and not those related to individual traits. We want to facilitate the access to a Healthy City to children and adolescents. To promote physical and mental health it is necessary to start by making changes in their local environment (street and community) and then at the neighbourhood and county level. Our solution is based on an interactive platform that gathers data in relation to obesity risk factors to be used by parents and stakeholders. Data included will rely on two main sources, i) public repositories from governmental institutions (schools and hospitals locations, health care, demography, pollution sources, etc.) and ii) directly uploaded data from parents and community members and local enterprises (public spaces for outdoor activities, healthy food options, facilities for overweight treatments).  In this manner, stakeholders will be able to make data driven decisions that facilitate access to nutritious food, parks for outdoor activities and to evaluate already implemented programs based on parents comments and opinions. While parents can make guided that impact the direct child environment.

This project is aimed to provide a healthy city and local environments for children (under 5 years) and those between ages 6 to 19. There are small actions that can impact significantly in children’s lives in the short and long term that can’t be achievable without synergy between families and local authorities. Although society is aware of the consequences of unhealthy eating habits, i.e. intake of large amounts of sugary drinks and junk food, there isn’t much that families can do to replace these by healthier options. Due to healthy food (salads, fruits and non-processed meat) are costly and difficult to access in an urban area. Additionally local authorities haven’t succeed in providing cheap and accessible alternatives for overweight treatments. Some Hospitals provide surgery for those children that arrive with and exacerbated problem when their life is already in risk, but not for all. Thus, communities can provide in a participatory manner with information to other families and local authorities about the living conditions at their community, schools and medical services. So they can help each other finding cheap and affordable ways for low and middle income families to guarantee better life styles for their children.

In the first stage of these project we will develop our proposal for children and communities in Mexico City. The aim is to construct an interactive platform accompanied with a mobile app that will have two main functionalities. First, public databases will be uploaded to a dynamic web platform with a friendly interface to be used by decision makers. This platform will include the following information: i) sociodemographic characteristics at the community, neighbourhood and borough level (source: CONAPO, INEGI and local governments); ii) health data such as obesity prevalence, obesity comorbidities, location of public hospitals, and primary care units, etc. from the Health Secretariat; iii) pollution data from the Environment Secretariat among others. This data will be mapped in order to visualize risk patterns to be accounted for policy design and urban planning. Second, a mobile app will be available to be used by family members (parents) that require information about institutions (Universities and Health institutions) that provide low-cost medical consultation on diet, overweight treatment, and requirements for major interventions (like surgeries and other procedures for extreme cases). This information will be provided by the institutions encharged and rated by previous users. In addition small, medium and large enterprises offering affordable healthy food could be easily tracked (in maps) and rated by users. This enterprises could eventually offer their services to schools and throughout communities, under special conditions regulated by public/private schools and local authorities. In a later stage, due to the fact that most affected population by this condition are those of low-middle income families in metropolitan areas, we know that this proposal can be tested and will serve for different urban areas in Mexico, as well as for other countries in Latin America and developing countries worldwide.