October 20, 2011

NEWS: Expert calls for societal solution to child obesity (QATAR)

DOHA: Children are at great risk in the face of a worldwide obesity crisis, fuelled by fast food, poor health practices and a barrage of media messages, a leading expert on children’s media told an audience at Northwestern University in Qatar on Tuesday.

Dr Ellen Wartella (pictured), director of Northwestern University’s Center on Media and Human Development in Evanston, Illinois, and the chair of an international task force crafting policies to combat childhood obesity, previewed a forthcoming global study which will advocate solutions to a growing global problem with deep implications for the US and Qatar.

“New evidence shows that childhood obesity is a societal problem more than it is an individual problem – and needs societal solutions,” she said. The best intelligence on the subject has come from a chorus of voices from medicine and public health, social policy and media, she said.

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