Simple Ways to Live a Healthy Lifestyle
The prevention of obesity in the children of Europe and around the world requires a change in lifestyle, the prevention of chronic diseases, and more active daily life. Research and intervention that aims at preventing the onset of many chronic diseases and improving the quality of life of Europeans and in particular, the young people of Europe and around the world is therefore urgently needed.
The aims of the study are to
1. find a global network of health and lifestyle change programmes. 2. measure the prevalence of the health related behaviours in the population, their prevalence and the associated health risks in relation to obesity prevalence.
3. identify different types of interventions that are effective in promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors (diet, physical activity, nutrition).
4. estimate the economic and social costs of obesity (per person) for a particular lifestyle change.
5. compare the results with different types of interventions and estimates the impact of different types of interventions in the reduction of the prevalence of obesity and the incidence of obesity. 6. explore the relationship between obesity prevalence and different types of lifestyle changes.
7. draw conclusions about the impact of new interventions in terms of public health and health care costs.
8. consider the relationship of the different types of interventions to the prevention of chronic diseases in different countries.
Methods The study comprises three aspects
1. a global network of health and lifestyle change programmes covering the whole of the world;
2. identification of different types of interventions that are effective in promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors (diet, physical activity, nutrition);
3. estimation of the economic and social costs of obesity (per person) for a particular lifestyle change.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study is a cross-sectional study on the health-related behaviours and health outcomes in the general population aged 15–74 years of age in the WHO Global Burden of Disease study database.
The study has received ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and all the authors. The study was carried out as part of a project 'Health-Related Behaviors among the Global Population: Population and Health Attitudes and Behaviors in the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study' (project number: 323525).
The study has been completed and all the data have been entered in the WHO Global Burden of Disease database (http://burdenofdiseases.who.int/). The WHO Global Burden of Disease study is a joint project of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN). WHO is a founding member of the Global Burden of Disease Study, and the National Center for Health Statistics in the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention is the primary data provider for the study. In 2003, the Global Burden of Disease study was updated and re-launched in 2004. Information on WHO is available on the World Wide Web at www.who.int and www.cdc.gov.
The study was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Social Affairs through a grant from the Ministry of Education (2006-07832) as well as a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESA) of the Netherlands, the European Research Council (ERC) through a fellowship (2006-08531), and from the Dutch Ministry of Health through a grant from the Ministry of Education (2006-08445). The authors gratefully acknowledge the involvement of the Health System Services of Norway. The authors would also like to thank all the participants in the study, the staff of the Study Centre, all the experts in the field, and the management of the study.