The Honourable Jim Rondeau, Minister of Healthy Living, Youth and Seniors, minister responsible for Healthy Child, along with his federal, provincial and territorial colleagues, launched Our Health Our Future: A National Dialogue on Healthy Weights – a key step in identifying actions to curb childhood obesity and promote healthy weights in Canada.
Through Our Health Our Future, governments across the country will engage Canada’s youth, parents and caregivers, and multiple sectors of society in a national conversation to address the factors that lead to obesity and to generate ideas for individual and collective actions to promote healthy weights in children and youth. The outcomes of the dialogue will contribute to a report and recommendations for collective actions for the meeting of federal, provincial and territorial Health Ministers in November 2011.
“We all know the ongoing health and lifestyle challenges created when children and youth are overweight or obese,” Rondeau said. “We also know that working together through joint initiatives such as Our Health Our Future gives us the best chance of finding solutions and creating a healthier future for our children.”
Our Health Our Future includes a website with opportunities to share ideas online, in-person dialogues in locations across the country, and a national summit. Discussion areas include making our social and physical environments more supportive of physical activity and healthy eating, identifying and addressing obesity risks in children early, increasing access to nutritious foods and decreasing the marketing of foods and beverages high in fat, sugar or sodium to children.
All Canadians, especially youth, are encouraged to visit www.ourhealthourfuture.gc.ca to share their ideas for change and to commit to their own action on healthy weights.
“I’m very excited to roll out this national dialogue with my colleagues,” said the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health. “This is a groundbreaking event, bringing together for the first time in Canada a broad and diverse group of people to identify actions to this issue. Everyone has a role to play in helping children and youth live a healthy life.”
Our Health Our Future: A National Dialogue on Healthy Weights is a key step in implementing Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Framework for Action on Healthy Weights. Through the Framework, Ministers of Health and/or Health Promotion/Healthy Living, as well as their colleagues in Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation, have agreed to make childhood obesity a collective priority, to champion this issue, and to co-ordinate joint and/or complementary actions within many areas of Canadian society to help create the conditions for healthy weights so that children have the healthiest possible start in life.
