The involvement of political representatives in childhood obesity prevention within the framework of the EEN-project

From that screening the literature on health promotion policy we have learned that public intervention is necessary in order to deal with childhood overweight and obesity and that the local administrative level constitutes the tailpiece of any public intervention in this field. The key task of the (local) government in obesity prevention consists of supporting the target groups (such as children, adolescents, etc.) and the first-level actors (such as parents, schools, sports organisations, associations for a healthy diet, etc.), so that the intended groups start to eat more healthy food and to take more physical exercise. In this respect we also have learned 1) that the (local) government should play four different major parts to show real leadership, and 2) that furthermore various other institutional factors determine to what degree childhood obesity prevention is translated into reality