Fact Sheet

Our Health Our Future: A National Dialogue on Healthy Weights

News Release: Health Ministers across Canada launch a National dialogue on childhood obesity

Everyone has a role to play

• Our Health Our Future is a national dialogue to inform Canadians about the issue of childhood overweight and obesity, and to engage various sectors of Canadian society to help address this important public health issue.
• Our Health Our Future recognizes that a complex system of factors contribute to overweight and obesity. To address the causes of obesity we need to change the social and physical environments that influence children’s and families’ eating habits and physical activity levels.
• This initiative recognizes that all Canadians can play a role in identifying ways to create the conditions that support healthy eating, physical activity and healthy weights.
• Our goal with Our Health Our Future is to kick-start a longer-term societal shift to support healthy weights by making the environments where children live, learn and play more supportive of physical activity and healthy eating.
  

How it works

• Our Health Our Future brings together the perspectives of individual Canadians as well as government and non-government stakeholders in Canada’s first national dialogue on childhood obesity.
• Through an online idea forum and submissions centre at www.ourhealthourfuture.gc.ca, youth, parents, caregivers and all Canadians can share their perspectives on the factors that contribute to childhood obesity and options that can influence and support healthy choices.
• Key stakeholders, including youth, non-governmental organizations, national Aboriginal organizations, media and industry will be invited to face-to-face dialogues across the country to explore areas for joint and/or complementary action.
• The outcomes will be shared at a national summit in fall 2011 and will contribute to the development of a report and recommendations for action that will be presented to federal, provincial and territorial Health Ministers.

A shared approach

• Last fall, Canada’s Ministers of Health agreed to a framework to coordinate our approaches to promote healthy weights below children under the age of 18.
• Through Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Framework for Action to Promote Healthy Weights Ministers agreed to
  • make childhood obesity a collective priority,
  • champion this issue, and
  • encourage shared leadership as well as joint or complementary actions across jurisdictions to influence the physical and social conditions that promote healthy weights so that children have the healthiest possible start in life.
• As a first action under the Framework, Ministers committed to engaging citizens, government and non-government partners, and industry to mobilize Canadians, gather perspectives and develop a shared approach to promoting healthy weights in children.
• The input received through Our Health Our Future is a key step in helping to identify actions to address overweight and obesity in children and youth, and implement the Curbing Childhood Obesity Framework.
• The Curbing Childhood Obesity Framework was also endorsed by Ministers responsible for Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation in February 2011 -- an example of how government sectors can work together to achieve common and complementary goals.
  

The need for collective action

• Canada is in the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic. Childhood overweight and obesity has been rising steadily in Canada in recent decades. More than one-in-four children and youth in Canada are overweight or obese.
• Between 1978/79 and 2004, the combined prevalence of overweight and obesity among those aged two to 17 increased from 15 per cent to 26 per cent.
• Increases were highest among youth, aged 12 to 17 years, with overweight and obesity more than doubling for this age group, from 14 per cent to 29 per cent.
• Young people of Aboriginal origin (off-reserve) had a significantly high combined overweight/obesity rate of 41 per cent.
• Reducing obesity levels and promoting healthy weights is critical to the prevention of ill health. Increasingly, obese children are being diagnosed with a range of health conditions previously seen almost exclusively among adults, including Type-2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

Find more information about overweight and obesity and Our Health Our Future at www.ourhealthourfuture.gc.ca.

* It should be noted that although Quebec shares the general goals of the Framework for Action and the Declaration, it was not involved in developing them and does not subscribe to a Canada-wide strategy in these areas. Quebec intends to remain solely responsible for developing and implementing programs for promoting healthy living within its territory. However, Quebec does intend to continue exchanging information and expertise with other governments in Canada.