Paris, April 22nd 2014 – 7 Community-Based Programmes promoting healthier lifestyles across Europe, part of EPHE – EPODE for the Promotion of Health Equity project, have organised dedicated interventions to promote the importance of adequate hydration for a healthy lifestyle and have made the World Water Day their highlighting moment!
Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, Romania joined their efforts and organised more than 30 interventions involving 1686 participants from children, parents, teachers and other community stakeholders. Open lessons, theatre plays, public events were put in place to teach beneficiaries about the importance of water consumption for a balanced diet.
All activities organised across the 7 European communities were promoted via the EPHE World Water Day event page on Facebook.
The interventions on water are part of each country action plan for 2014, as the need for promoting proper hydration was underlined by the baseline evaluation results conducted in 2013 in each participating Community-Based Programmes.
EPHE is a 3 years Pan-European project co-funded by the European Commission that seeks to reduce the health gap between socioeconomic groups on four energy balance-related behaviours and their determinants:
- Water consumption
- Variety in fruits and vegetables consumption
- Physical inactivity
- Sleep in terms of quality and duration
This project, running from 2012 to 2015, is conducting a pilot-life testing across Europe to analyse the added values of the community-based approaches to reach the whole community including the deprived population who are the most at risk.
« Minorities and the poor are clearly at a disadvantage when it comes to the adoption of healthier eating habits » A. Drewnoski
Over the past decade, several studies have demonstrated that the prevention of childhood obesity is possible through Community-Based Interventions (CBIs), to improve eating and physical activity habits. Increasing evidence shows that the most successful interventions are multicomponent, adapted to the local context (cultural and environmental), using the existing local structures and networks of a community building partnerships and finally, involving the participants in the planning, implementation and evaluation stages.