On 2 March, the CEIDSS team attended the launch of the book “Mum, what is obesity?” an initiative of the Portuguese Association Against Childhood Obesity as part of World Obesity Day. To mark World Obesity Day, which this year marks the 20th anniversary of its recognition as a chronic disease in Portugal, the Portuguese Association Against Childhood Obesity (APCOI) launched the book “Mum, what is obesity?” to inspire and support mothers, fathers and other careers to talk about this issue as a family, without stigma.

The 11th International Conference on Nutrition and Growth (N&G) 2024 took place in Lisbon, Portugal from 15 – 17 February 2024, and it was the ultimate meeting place to discuss the interplay between nutrition and growth in the pediatric age group. CEIDSS Director, Ana Rito, discussed in the session “GrowH! – Obesity Prevention Tailored to Critical Transition Periods in the Early Life-course”, after the presentations of speakers from Germany, Spain and Belgium.

On 6 February 2024, CEIDSS held a training session for the nutrition agents of the Missão Continente School Programme. In order to contribute to a healthy generation, the Continente Mission School Programme raises awareness of a healthy lifestyle in school communities ranging from pre-school to secondary school.

Rigour and precision are crucial for the project to work effectively. For this to happen, the Nutrition Agents have received training to standardise procedures relating to the playful-educational dynamics to be developed in the classroom and anthropometric assessment.

On 17 January, the MUN-SI programme began its intervention in primary schools in the municipalities of Cascais and Oeiras. This year the following themes are being tackled: school snacks, Mediterranean soups and dishes, food labelling and food waste.

Find out more about the MUN-SI programme HERE.

Last December, nutritionist Fátima Martins from the CEIDSS team represented CEIDSS team in the 20th anniversary of Missão Continente in national television. The recording of the broadcast is available HERE.

The Missão Continente School programme is a branch of Missão Continente and has been present in schools across the country since 2016, promoting awareness of a healthy lifestyle in school communities ranging from pre-school to primary school. CEIDSS is currently carrying out a Scientific Impact Measurement Study of the Escola Missão Continente programme until 2025. Find out more about CEIDSS’s work here.

On November 13, CEIDSS organized, in partnership with EIT Food, the 2nd part of the 2nd edition of the “Career Day – On the Food Route” event, which consisted of a visit to the Sumol+Compal industry in Almeirim, aimed at 12th graders from the Frei Gonçalo de Azevedo Secondary School.

The activity included an initial presentation about the industry, its organization, structure, mission and portfolio of drinks sold, followed by the sharing of testimonies from some professionals working in the areas of purchasing from suppliers, agronomy and nutrition. Throughout the presentation, the young people asked their questions and curiosities about the products produced and their careers and career paths in the industry.

Afterwards, there was a guided tour of the factory and the product development, packaging and quality laboratories. During this visit, the young people were able to follow the production processes and learn about the work carried out by the professionals in each department.

On 1^st and 2^nd November, CEIDSS attended the launch meeting of the new European project BETTER4U at Harokopio University in Athens, Greece.

BETTER4U is a 4-year project funded by the European HORIZON-HLTH-2022 Programme, which aims to identify and personalise the management of all the determinants of weight gain in order to combat the growing prevalence of overweight/obesity, through public health initiatives and key interventions that are globally adaptable and evaluated in practice.

This project focuses on investigating the global challenge of obesity, studying the problem and offering solutions in a realistic and tangible way, with the support of modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the contribution of experts from around the world.

At this 2-day meeting, the project’s Consortium met to present and discuss the BETTER4U Work Packages, their scientific objectives and tasks, results, deadlines, as well as the contribution of each partner. In addition to the presentations, the meeting included an interactive session where the partners had the opportunity to share ideas and perspectives on the project’s recommendations and dissemination, exploitation and communication plan.

CEIDSS will be a partner in this European project, contributing to the design of behavioural and environmental indicators related to weight gain, the BETTER4ALL pilot study and the development of the clinical trial design. In addition, the CEIDSS team will implement and continuously monitor the intervention, as well as contribute to the evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and budget impact of the intervention.

On October 20th, CEIDSS organized the 1st part of the 2nd edition of the “Career Day – On the Food Route” event, which took place at the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA). This event was attended by young people from the 12th year of the Science and Technology course at the Frei Gonçalo de Azevedo Secondary School in Cascais.

This event was organized with the support of EIT Food, an organization co-funded by the European Union, and was attended by 12th graders from the Science and Technology course at Frei Gonçalo de Azevedo Secondary School, Cascais. The event’s programme included the participation of 7 speakers, unit managers from the Food and Nutrition Department (DAN), who shared their testimonies about their academic and professional careers, as well as the tasks and activities carried out in their day-to-day work at INSA.

The Final Conference of the European project CO-CREATE was held in Brussels on 12 and 13 October. This event featured productive sessions on “system thinking”, the involvement of young people in policy development, the co-creation process in the participating countries, how to boost dialogue between policy and young people, as well as reflections and future prospects based on CO-CREATE’s learnings for research and policy.

CEIDSS Director Ana Rito did a presentation entitled “Generating ideas about future policy – mapping youth systems and alliances: perspectives in Portugal”.

In addition to the presentations, the event featured panel discussions, the sharing of partners’ experiences and participants had the opportunity to try out some of the project’s policy tools, including the Advocacy Toolkit, the CO-CREATE Dialogue Forum Tool and the CO-CREATE project’s interactive tool for preventing obesity in adolescents. In addition, the CO-CREATE Youth Task Force presented an Open Letter – https://exchange.iseesystems.com/public/furkan/cc-interface/index.html#page1.

From 18 to 20 September 2023, the final Best-ReMaP conference, “From Evidence to Action – Sustaining the Impact of Best-ReMaP”, took place in Paris. Best-ReMaP is a European Union project dedicated to promoting children’s well-being and health through an evidence-based approach to addressing crucial issues in their food choices.

The aim of the Best-ReMaP project was to implement health interventions that have proven to be effective, based on practices that have been proven to work in the areas of food reformulation, regulation of food advertising aimed at children and the purchase of healthy foods by public bodies in the agri-food sector, thus helping to increase the supply of healthier processed food options (reducing the salt, sugar and fat of processed foods) available on EU (super)markets.