Promoting Healthy Weight in Children (PromoKids) - Ending Childhood Obesity in the Nordic Countries

The PromoKids network was established to function as a communication forum for health and wellbeing professionals in the Nordic Countries. 

The network was formed at the Nordic public health seminar organised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in Helsinki in 2016.

As childhood obesity is high on the agenda both in the EU and the UN, a workshop was organised under the topic of “Ending childhood obesity in the Nordic Countries”. All the Nordic countries were represented in the workshop. The main outcome of the workshop was a decision to start a Nordic network to continue collaboration and share experiences in a more organised way. 

Objectives

• To strengthen Nordic cooperation and networking for promoting children's health and preventing obesity.
• To disseminate and embed good practices and policies. 
• To emphasise children’s health promotion and obesity prevention in the Nordic countries taking into account early prevention, the role of different actors and the importance of the living environment and community. 
• To share good experiences and ideas on how to implement the recommendations of the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity report (WHO) in the Nordic countries.
• To share good experiences and ideas on how to implement the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR) in the Nordic countries, for example in the development of guidelines for food and meals served in schools and daycare and in the dissemination of efficient health promotion material.
• To align and to share good practices in monitoring childhood obesity.
• To share good experiences and ideas on how to collaborate in the reformulation of foods and beverages and in the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.

Partners

Nordic specialist network

Funding

• Nordic Council of Ministers
• Nordic Working Group for Diet, Food & Toxicology (NKMT)

Contact information

Päivi Mäki
Development Manager
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
Tel. +358 29 524 8612
e-mail: [email protected]

Heli Kuusipalo
Senior Adviser
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
Tel. +358 29 524 6747
e-mail: [email protected]