Publications about youth

Beyond 'Smoking kills' | 4.8 MB

07 Oct 2008 | This report, subtitled 'Protecting children, reducing inequalities', is published by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), in collaboration with the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and endorsed by over 100 health and welfare organisations. It calls on the UK government to introduce a comprehensive tobacco control strategy which could help a further 4.5 million smokers to quit by 2015 by: a) requiring plain packaging for all tobacco products (research in the report shows that young people are between 3 and 4 times less likely to pick a plain pack as a branded one if they were trying smoking for the first time); b) prohibiting the display of tobacco products in shops; c) clamping down on smuggling; and d) giving smokers access to safer non-tobacco alternatives to smoking

Fit City in Smartmoves | 1.4 MB

06 Oct 2008 | This short article (at the bottom of the pages) about OxHA's Fit City competition appears in the UK Department of Transport's Smartmoves magazine, issue 5 (October 2008). The full magazine can be found at http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/smarterchoices/smartmoves/issue5smartmove.pdf

Design for play

30 Sep 2008 | This UK document, 'Design for play: a guide for creating successful play spaces', is intended primarily for commissioners and designers of children’s play areas, to support good practice in the development and improvement of public play space. It presents guiding principles, suggested approaches and aims to inspire innovative and creative ideas.

Change4Life

10 Sep 2008 | The Change4Life initiative is a government scheme to bring together multiple stakeholders to help to 'change the lives of families in England by improving their diet, exercise and attitude to good health'. It is a national movement, launched in autumn 2008 before a major publicity campaign starts in January 2009.

FTC: Marketing food to children | 2.8 MB

30 Jul 2008 | This major report, 'Marketing food to children and adolescents: a review of industry expenditures, activities, and self-regulation', by the Federal Trade Commission is the first accurately to assess the spending by 44 major US food and beverage companies on their marketing to children. In 2006, $1.6 billion was spent on advertising aimed at 2- to 17-year-olds. The report aims to be a benchmark for future years.

Obesity prevention in children

30 Jun 2008 | This report, available to read and download free, is a summary of a June 2008 Institute of Medicine (US) workshop on 'Community perspectives on obesity prevention in children'. It describes various locally-based childhood obesity prevention programs, their challenges and promises.

Young people's health and rights | 721.8 kB

30 Jun 2008 | This document, by Family Care International, is entitled 'Mobilising communities on young people's health and rights: An advocacy training guide '. It is a guide to strengthen community-level advocacy initiatives focusing on young people's health and rights. It identifies steps in defining goals and objectives, developing effective messages and activities, and monitoring and evaluating an advocacy campaign, and includes an advocacy toolkit for program managers and training guide.

Inequalities in young people's health

17 Jun 2008 | This report, subtitled, 'Health behaviour in school-aged children: International report from the 2005/2006 survey', was produced for the WHO by the Child and Adolescent Health Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh. It provides 'data on young people across a wide range of health, education, social and family measures', and 'adopts a systematic approach to quantifying inequalities'. It 'sets out the associations between family affluence and the diverse health variables the study focuses on, presenting them by geographic region.' Warning: Large file (30 MB).

Sydney Principles (article)

29 May 2008 | This article by Swinburn et al. was published in Public Health Nutrition in May 2008. It concludes that ‘the Sydney Principles, which took a children’s rights-based approach, should be used to benchmark action to reduce marketing to children. The age definition for a child and the types of products which should have marketing restrictions may better suit a risk-based approach at this stage. The Sydney Principles should guide the formation of an International Code on Food and Beverage Marketing to Children.’

MEND in Denmark

29 Oct 2007 | This link is to documents from an information meeting of the MEND programme, which is being developed for a Danish audience, in partnership with OxHA.

Child-friendly cities

27 Oct 2007 | In this talk, recorded at the National Museum of Australia, Dr Paul Tranter critiques the Disney movie Monsters Inc. in an entertaining examination of the serious issue of making our cities safe, fun and connective for our kids. He suggests three main ways of making cities child friendly: changes to urban form and transport; improving neighbourhood design; changes in social values.

Every child's future matters

14 Aug 2007 | This report, by the UK's Sustainable Development Commission, developed out of the Every Child Matters (ECM) project, which aims to 'improve the daily experiences of all young people in England - from birth to nineteen - focusing on their wellbeing, personal development and future prosperity. This paper explores the influence of the environment on children's wellbeing and is written for everyone designing and delivering services that impact on children's lives.'

Symposium issue: Childhood obesity

11 May 2007 | In this symposium issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 35(1) (spring 2007), researchers and policymakers go beyond 'personal choice' as the scapegoat for the childhood obesity epidemic to view it from a public health perspective. It contains articles on community and school interventions, healthy environments, and the application of the law to child obesity.

Active Design | 4.6 MB

25 Apr 2007 | This is 'a fresh approach to urban planning and design funded by Sport England to help get local communities active and more involved in sport'. It gives 'easy-to-use guidance and information to townplanners, architects and urban designers on how to put sport and opportunities to get active at the heart of new housing and community developments'.

Food for thought | 288.3 kB

28 Mar 2007 | This document is the executive summary of a Kaiser Family Foundation report, 'Food for thought: television food advertising to children in the United States' (http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7618.cfm). It is 'the largest study ever conducted of TV food advertising to children [and] ... combines content analysis of TV ads with detailed data about children’s viewing habits to provide an estimate of the number and type of TV ads seen by children of various ages'.

Preventing Chronic Disease: Global Health

27 Mar 2007 | This issue (April 2007) of Preventing Chronic Disease focuses particularly on global health and explores the efforts of several countries to respond to the challenges of chronic disease and support the health and well-being of their citizens. It includes articles on Vietnam, diabetes on the US-Mexico border, and perceptions of cigarette warning labels in the US and Canada.

Ofcom: TV advertising to children | 200.4 kB

22 Feb 2007 | This document, 'Television advertising of food and drink products to children: final statement', was published in February 2007. It details the conclusions of a consultation process, and includes its scheduling restrictions, which will come into force in 2007 and 2008.

NICE guidelines on obesity | 997.2 kB

13 Dec 2006 | 'Obesity: guidance on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity in adults and children' was published in December 2006 by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in the UK.

European Charter on Obesity | 136.9 kB

18 Nov 2006 | This document was adopted in November 2006 by the member states of the WHO European Region, at the European Ministerial Conference on Counteracting Obesity in Istanbul. The goal of the Charter is: 'Visible progress, especially relating to children and adolescents, should be achievable in most countries in the next 4-5 years and it should be possible to reverse the trend by 2015 at the latest'. Reaching this goal requires specific, targeted action across many sectors

Healthy habits among adolescents | 1.6 MB

30 Oct 2006 | This report, 'Addressing the socioeconomic determinants of healthy eating and physical activity levels among adolescents', is published by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. It focuses on outcomes of the WHO/HSBC Forum 2006 and provides examples from different European countries.