Through an ambitious global partnership, Novo Nordisk and UNICEF are taking a lead role in the prevention of childhood overweight and obesity across the world.

Our key shared objective is to contribute to the prevention of childhood overweight and obesity by addressing obesogenic environments, improving diets, and changing societal narrative and norms to help shift perceptions so that tackling childhood overweight and obesity is seen as a societal responsibility and not an individual one. The partnership is structured to first focus its efforts on areas with the some of the highest rates of childhood overweight, wherefore the partnership’s primary focus is on Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

The prevalence of overweight, including obesity, among children and adolescents is increasing almost everywhere.

  • Around 40 million under-fives around the world have overweight, about 5.7 percent of children in this age group.7
  • It is estimated more than 340 million children aged 5 to 19 years being overweight, or nearly 18 percent worldwide.8
  • Once regarded as a condition of the urban rich, overweight including obesity now afflicts both urban and rural poor children and is increasing most rapidly in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs).9
  • The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region faces some of the highest rates of childhood overweight in the world and is one of the regions where UNICEF and partners are working most actively on the prevention agenda.9
Mexico

Colombia

1.https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241510240. 2. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241510240. 3. Nugent R, Levin C, Hale J, Hutchinson B. Economic effects of the double burden of malnutrition. The Lancet. 2020 Jan 11;395(10218):156-64. UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank JME 2020 Edition: https://data.unicef.org/resources/jme-report-2021/. 4. Swinburn, Boyd A., et al. (2011). 5. UNICEF Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030. 6. World Health. 10. ENSANUT 2018 (Mexico National Nutrition and Health Survey). 7. UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank JME 2020 Edition: https://data.unicef.org/resources/jme-report-2021/. 8. NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Worldwide trends in body-mass index, underweight, overweight, and obesity from 1975 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 2416 population-based measurement studies in 128·9 million children, adolescents, and adults. Lancet, 2017; 390(10113): 2627- 2642. 9. NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCDRisC) Worldwide trends in body-mass index, underweight, overweight, and obesity from 1975 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 2416 population based measurement studies in 128·9 million children, adolescents, and adults. Lancet, 2017; 390(10113): 2627- 2642. 10. ENSANUT 2018 (Mexico National Nutrition and Health Survey). 11. Encuesta Nacional de la Situación Nutricional 20015” Ministerio de Salud, Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, Instituto Nacional de Salud, OPS