(ISBNPA Fellow) will moderate the session facilitating discussion and inviting questions.

The aim of this panel is to consider what we can do from a behavioral nutrition and physical activity approach to achieve both healthy people and a healthy planet.

Our panelists include Professor Elling Bere, Dr. Wilma Waterland and Professor Steven Allender.

Abstract: 

Regular physical activity is important for young people’s current and future health, well-being, and academic performance. Evidence consistently shows that young people’s levels of physical activity are insufficient for optimal health. Globally, the vast majority of children do not meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) each day, and physical activity declines during childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. Identifying ways to promote and maintain active living in young people is therefore a critical public health issue, but intervention efforts to date generally show limited impact.

 In this talk, I will review the most recent intervention evidence of school-based physical activity interventions, explore our understanding of the reasons for the limited impact (including implementation issues), and discuss future directions for young people’s physical activity promotion.

Abstract: Are underserved, minority communities an afterthought in the design of nutrition interventions? Are population-based nutrition programs a last priority in the light of competing economic and political priorities of underserved communities?   In this talk, I will draw on our body of work to describe the team’s experience with present-day challenges to addressing dietary disparities in this nutrition transition era.  I will present empirical findings of our work to bring a Latino immigrant community partners into the forefront of change to support healthful eating behaviors.

Chair: Annie Anderson The world has entered a stage of the nutrition transition dominated by increasingly unhealthy diets and activity patterns. Body composition distribution and NCDs related to diet and activity are increasing, especially in low and middle-income countries(LMICs). LMICs face an accelerating shift as global food systems and technology have dramatically changed food supplies and physical activity patterns. Food processors, food services, retailers, and agribusinesses have assumed the major role in food provision, and their voluntary efforts have failed to improve global diets. The shifts in diet and activity patterns are discussed. Most major policy initiatives by LMICs have been utilizing large-scale regulatory strategies to improve diets with limited focus on physical activity. Two approaches are foremost. First is a combination of taxation and price subsidies that make unhealthy foods and beverages, especially sugar-sweetened beverages, expensive and healthy traditional foods and beverages, such as fresh produce and legumes, more affordable. Second is prohibition of marketing that does not promote healthy behaviors. In addition to controls on media aimed at children, which have limited value, some countries are implementing full controls on all media, sometimes in combination with front-of-the-package profiling and positive or negative logos on products that encourage consumers to make healthier food purchases. Another initiative is placing controls on foods and beverages in schools and other public institutions. Few countries have introduced national programs to promote physical activity, yet that lifestyle component cannot be ignored. Important evidence regarding the impacts of large-scale actions is emerging. We are entering for the first time an era where many large-scale regulatory approaches are being evaluated and we will finally begin to test and then refine approaches that are more likely to prevent obesity and improve our diets in a way that will reduce the risk of many noncommunicable diseases and intermediate cardiometabolic risk factors.

Chair: Amy Yaroch Nutrition and physical activity are not single-cause, single effect issues. There isn’t a single magical diet, magical food item, magical exercise device, magical exercise program, or magical potion that will solve the current physical inactivity, non-communicable disease, and obesity epidemics. Instead, these epidemics are systems issues and are the result of broken biological, behavioral, social, environmental, and economic systems that all affect each other. For example, a person’s likelihood of participating in physical activity may depend on how much sleep that person gets, what competing priorities there may be, what that person’s work or school schedule is like, whether that person’s peers convince him or her to get physical activity, whether there are available physical education classes or programs, whether the local areas are safe and walkable and have parks, recreation centers, and playing fields, and whether that person can afford sports programs and equipment. A person’s food choice may depend on what types of food are available around them, how much time they have, how much the food costs and what they can afford, and what their peers are eating. Moreover, these are systems issues. Solving physical inactivity and nutrition problems are crucial as this can positively affect many different systems, having far-reaching mental and physical health, social, economics, and other benefits. Unaided, humans may have a hard time understanding these complex systems. Therefore, in order to better understand and develop and implement the right solutions, there is a need for more systems approaches. Systems approaches include new methods such as systems mapping and computational modeling that also leverage and utilize new developments such as mobile technologies, Big Data, and artificial intelligence. We will walk through examples of such systems approaches and methods. Systems approaches are not only the future of nutrition and physical activity but also should be the present.

Chair: Ralph Maddison

Urgent action is required to keep to the commitments of the Paris Climate Agreement which aims to limit a global mean temperature rise this century well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels and ‘to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5° C. Currently we are on a trajectory which would result in a rise of about 3.2° C by the end of the century in the absence of more effective policies to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane and black carbon. Many such policies can yield major co-benefits for health and development more widely, through reduced exposure to particulate and ozone air pollution and through healthy sustainable diets and increased physical activity. Greater recognition of these multiple near-term benefits can help overcome barriers to urgent action. However such policies need to be designed carefully in order to avoid unintended harms, examples include the promotion of diesel vehicles as a ‘low-carbon‘ alternative to petrol or the effects on food prices of poorly designed biofuel policies. This presentation will give an overview of recent developments in quantifying the health and related (co)-benefits of different policy options to cut emissions in a range of sectors including transport, food and agriculture, housing and energy. It will also discuss how to minimise the risks of unintended adverse consequences.

Chair: Mark Tremblay

Nowadays most people, even in the poorest countries, live longer lives. The theme of this year’s conference “Healthy people on a healthy planet” directly links to active ageing as compressing morbidity in the ageing population is of utmost importance for the planet to be sustainable. With the right active ageing approach ageing offers opportunities, next to important challenges. This keynote will address some physical activity challenges and opportunities in our (super-)aged societies. The fact that people live longer results in a large age range in the older population. To prevent physical, cognitive, mental and social health decline physical activity programs are needed for the full range of the ageing population. A major challenge in our ageing population is tackling the wave of cognitive function decline and dementia. Physical activity is known to improve cognitive function at older age through processes of neuroplasticity. Enriching physical activity interventions with cognitive challenge is found to maximize the neuroplastic properties of the brain that could enhance the potential of prevention and treatment programs for alleviating cognitive decline and also to play an important role in fall prevention. In physical activity programs for the elderly, sufficient cognitive challenge seems even more important to obtain cognitive effects than high doses of intervention sessions. Consequently in order to avoid the decline in quality of life and enhance mental next to physical vigour, program developers and implementers need to cognitively enrich physical activity programs. We can learn from many good practices already out in the field and need to define the most effective and implementable strategies. Furthermore, this keynote will touch on some other merging physical activity topics in older adults, like lifecourse-approaches with intergenerational programs and ageing-friendly neighbourhoods.

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