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Addressing the Wicked Problem of Obesity through Planning and Policies
In this month's editorial, the PLOS Medicine editors discuss need to address the "wicked" problem of physical inactivity through planning and policies.
Two papers recently published in PLOS Medicine examine different aspects of physical activity in the context of public health. The first, by Christopher Millet and colleagues, documents the associations between active travel to work and overweight, hypertension, and diabetes in India; the second is a systematic review by Patrick Kolsteren and colleagues, showing that in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), where the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is high and rising, the gap between policy and burden is substantial. The need to address physical inactivity is urgent: the World Health Organization now ranks physical inactivity as the fourth leading global risk factor for mortality, and a major cause of NCDs, the leading cause of death globally.
These various viewpoints highlight that the time is now right for many initiatives to come together in the global push around public health policies for inactivity and other risk factors for non-communicable diseases.
Image Credit: Margaret Winker, PLOS
Citation: (2013) PLOS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 10(6) June 2013. PLOS Med 10(6): ev10.i06. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pmed.v10.i06
Published: June 25, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Winker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
In this month's editorial, the PLOS Medicine editors discuss need to address the "wicked" problem of physical inactivity through planning and policies.
Two papers recently published in PLOS Medicine examine different aspects of physical activity in the context of public health. The first, by Christopher Millet and colleagues, documents the associations between active travel to work and overweight, hypertension, and diabetes in India; the second is a systematic review by Patrick Kolsteren and colleagues, showing that in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), where the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is high and rising, the gap between policy and burden is substantial. The need to address physical inactivity is urgent: the World Health Organization now ranks physical inactivity as the fourth leading global risk factor for mortality, and a major cause of NCDs, the leading cause of death globally.
These various viewpoints highlight that the time is now right for many initiatives to come together in the global push around public health policies for inactivity and other risk factors for non-communicable diseases.
Image Credit: Margaret Winker, PLOS