CARE To Address Overweight and Obesity

The key actions are organized by setting in a framework called CARE: Communication, Action, and Research and Evaluation.

Communication: Provision of information and tools to motivate and empower decision makers at the governmental, organizational, community, family, and individual levels who will create change toward the prevention and decrease of overweight and obesity.

Action: Interventions and activities that assist decision makers in preventing and decreasing overweight and obesity, individually or collectively.

Research and Evaluation: Investigations to better understand the causes of overweight and obesity, to assess the effectiveness of interventions, and to develop new communication and action strategies. Within the CARE framework, effective actions must occur at multiple levels. Obviously, individual behavioral change lies at the core of all strategies to reduce overweight and obesity. Successful efforts, however, must focus not only on individual behavioral change, but also on group influences, institutional and community influences, and public policy. Actions to reduce overweight and obesity will fail without this multidimensional approach. Individual behavioral change can occur only in a supportive environment with accessible and affordable healthy food choices and opportunities for regular physical activity. Furthermore, actions aimed exclusively at individual behavioral change, while not considering social, cultural, economic, and environmental influences, are likely to reinforce attitudes of stigmatization against the overweight and obese.