Tackling obesity.

Visionary leadership and legislative change is needed if the Ministry of Health's Healthy Eating, Healthy Action (HEHA) strategy is to tackle the issues leading to obesity, according to NZNO's submission to the Health Select Committee's inquiry into obesity and type two diabetes.

NZNO's submission outlines the extent of the problem--more than 1000 New Zealanders a year die from obesity-related problems and the annual cost of obesity in the health sector is estimated at $247 to $303 million a year. It illustrates how the burden of disease from obesity is disproportionately greater for Maori and Pacific people and that obesity is a child health issue. The submission was prepared by professional nursing adviser Angela Clark (formerly Dawbin), whose post-graduate studies were in childhood obesity, with input from primary health care nurses, diabetes nurse specialists, Te Runanga 0 Aotearoa NZNO and individual NZNO staff.

The submission is critical of the Ministry's failure to develop "a coherent national direction or strategic implementation of HEHA" and calls for an expert taskforce on obesity, independent of the food industry. It points out there is inadequate workforce capacity for nutrition education and says priority must be given to recruiting and retaining people to work in such roles. Other recommendations are to create healthy public policy; creating environments which support healthy eating; strengthening community action to develop initiatives that encourage good nutrition and physical acitivity; and monitoring, researching and evaluating physical activity and nutrition status in children, young people and their families/whanau.