WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative. Implementation of round 1 (2007/2008) and round 2 (2009/2010)

Nutritional surveillance in school-aged children, using measured weight and height, is not common in the WHO European Region. At the first consultation with Member States in the process leading to the WHO European Ministerial Conference on Counteracting Obesity in 2006, Member States recognized the need for harmonized surveillance systems among primary-school children on which policy development within the Region could be based. The WHO Regional Office for Europe established the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) in response to this need. COSI aims to measure trends in overweight and obesity in children aged 6.0–9.9 years in order to monitor the progress of and to reverse the epidemic, and to enable intercountry comparisons within the Region.

This is the first official WHO report on the implementation of COSI during two data collection rounds (school years 2007/2008 and 2009/2010) in 16 participating countries. The report uses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) technique to evaluate COSI implementation and describes the experiences gained, the challenges encountered and the obstacles overcome by participating countries.