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Comparative Analysis Of Dietary Guidelines In The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean, Melissa Fuster

Publications and Research

Objective: Dietary guidelines are important education and policy tools to address local nutrition concerns. The current paper presents a comparative analysis of nutrition messages from three Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries (Cuba, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic) to explore how these dietary guidelines address common public health nutrition concerns, contextualized in different changing food environments and food culture similarities.

Design: Qualitative, comparative analysis of current dietary guideline documents and key recommendations.

Results: Key recommendations were categorized into sixteen themes (two dietbased, ten food-based and four ‘other’). Only the Cuban dietary guidelines included diet-based key recommendations. Of the ten food-based …

Mobilisation Of Public Support For Policy Actions To Prevent Obesity, Terry T-K Huang, John H. Cawley, Marice Ashe, Sergio Costa, Leah M. Frerichs, Lindsey Zwicker, Juan A. Rivera, David Levy, Ross A. Hammond, Estelle V. Lambert, Shiriki K. Kumanyika

Publications and Research

Public mobilisation is needed to enact obesity prevention policies and to mitigate backlash against their implementation. However, current approaches in public health focus primarily on dialogue between public health professionals and political leaders. Strategies to increase popular demand for obesity prevention policies include refining and streamlining public information, identifying effective frames for each population, enhancing media advocacy, building citizen protest and engagement, and developing a receptive political environment with change agents embedded across organisations and sectors. Long-term support and investment in collaboration among diverse stakeholders to create shared value is also important. Each actor in an expanded coalition for obesity …

Patchy Progress On Obesity Prevention: Emerging Exemplars, Entrenched Barriers, And New Thinking, Christina A. Roberto, Boyd Swinburn, Corinna Hawkes, Terry T-K Huang, Sergio Costa, Marice Ashe, Lindsey Zwicker, John H. Cawley, Kelly D. Brownell

Publications and Research

Although there have been positive pockets of change, no country has yet turned around its obesity epidemic. Preventing an increase in obesity prevalence will require urgent actions from government as well as a broader spectrum of stakeholders than previously emphasized. In this paper, we review a number of regulatory and non-regulatory actions taken around the world to address obesity and discuss some of the reasons for the patchy progress. In addition, we preview the papers in this Lancet series, which each identify priority actions on key obesity issues and challenge some of the entrenched dichotomies that present obesity and its …