The EU and its Member States are making an unprecedented investment in research aimed at supporting policies to improve diet and physical activity, especially in children. The STOP project is one of three major European efforts, along with CO-CREATE (Confronting Obesity: Co-creating policy with youth) – funded in the same Horizon 2020 call as STOP – and the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN). The CO-CREATE project is led by Knut Inge Klepp, Executive Director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and focuses on reducing the prevalence of obesity in adolescents by working directly with young people to develop and support policy actions for improving food and physical activity environments. The PEN network is led by Wolfgang Ahrens, Professor of Epidemiological Methods at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in Bremen, Germany. It is a collaborative effort aimed at improving lifestyle behaviours, with a focus on diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviours.
The simultaneous funding of these three projects provides great opportunities for exploiting synergies and enhancing impacts. The three projects have agreed to coordinate their work in a number of areas in which synergies can be created, such as the mapping and benchmarking of relevant policies across Europe; the monitoring and surveillance of behaviours and obesity; and the evaluation of policy impacts.
