On the 5th of October 2022, OPEN held its first in-person meeting post-pandemic in Copenhagen, bringing together over 20 experts from 12 different countries across our network to reinforce our global commitment to accelerating policy change in obesity.
Throughout the day, experts had the opportunity to gain insight into the current global environment for obesity, the challenges faced by OPEN networks worldwide and to identify opportunities to accelerate change nationally.
Coming together, OPEN global and its national networks were able to identify a plan of action to meet the objectives of updated focus areas:
- Secure prioritisation of obesity as a non-communicable disease (NCD)
- Build health literacy
- Optimise prevention strategies
- Improve services
The key takeaways from the day were a need for standardisation of guidelines, a unified narrative on what obesity is and efforts required, as well as implementation of collaborative action that delivers a strengthened approach.
As a global network, OPEN will work to identify ways in which to support efforts to successfully deliver on identified needs and actions and continue to facilitate best practice sharing amongst its networks and global community to ensure all are able to deliver accelerated policy change in obesity which put in place effective strategies for people living with obesity.