By Jamar Knight on Thursday, 3 March, 2022 at 02:15 PM

Members of the World Obesity Day Youth Forum have made a call to members of the public across all sectors to aid in the fight against non-communicable diseases.

The World Obesity Day Youth Forum was held virtually on Tuesday and it saw a panel of youth advocates, nutritional specialists and doctors engaging in discussion to create healthy lifestyle changes and policies in Barbados and the Caribbean.

During the discussion, Public Health Nutritionist Nicole Griffith explained that signs of non-communicable disease in children were becoming much more prevalent.

“We have kids who are now showing signs of obesity from very young. We have a situation where signs you would have seen at ages 65 or 70 years old, you’re now seeing in kids as little as five years old. You have children who are having episodes of hypertension; they’re having episodes of diabetes from very young,” Griffith said.

Another panellist, Shereika Mills, policy coordinator for the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network, expressed her belief that policymakers and advocates needed to focus much more on how to include young people in the battle against NCDs.

Mills also stated that far more needs to be done to raise the awareness of health, and nutritional education with the youth starting from the school level.

“It really starts there [in schools] in terms of building awareness among young people of good eating habits, and good health and nutrition, and getting them involved in advocacy around the issue since it’s something that affects them.”

Dr. Kia Lewis also urged members of society across all sectors to play their part to reduce the threat of NCDs in the spirit of this year’s World Obesity Day theme ‘everybody needs to act’. She also urged private sectors to consider new initiatives to promote healthy lifestyles.

World Obesity Day, observed on March 4^th, is an initiative that is directed towards the eradication of the global obesity crisis.