FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Global Campaign Launches to Reverse Rising Childhood Obesity Rates in Urban Areas
Cities for Better Health initiative targets 6- to 13-year-olds in six countries with evidence-based, community-designed interventions
New York, NY – November 21, 2025
A coalition of public-health partners led by Cities for Better Health (CBH) today unveiled a multi-city campaign to prevent childhood obesity in some of the world’s most disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. The Childhood Obesity Prevention Initiative (COPI) will roll out coordinated packages of diet, physical-activity and environmental interventions for children aged 6–13 in Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town and Madrid, reaching an estimated 120,000 families within 24 months.
One in five children worldwide now lives with overweight or obesity—390 million boys and girls aged 5–19—while lower-income households experience rates nearly 2.5 times higher than their affluent peers . In the United States alone, 17 % of youth 6–17 had obesity in 2022-23, with Black and Hispanic children bearing a disproportionate burden . COPI’s launch comes as new [World Health Organization data](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight) show the annual global cost of childhood obesity exceeding $990 billion in direct medical expenses and lost productivity.
“City leaders have been asking for a playbook that is both scientifically rigorous and locally realistic,” said Dr. Lena Patel, CBH chief executive officer. “COPI answers that call by embedding researchers, schools, grocers and—most importantly—parents in every design decision so that healthy choices become the default choice.”
Each participating municipality will designate at least ten intervention neighborhoods matched with demographically similar control areas. Interventions range from retrofitting streetscapes for safe walking and cycling to negotiating corner-store stocking standards that increase fresh-produce shelf space from 15 % to 40 %. A controlled, repeated cross-sectional study will track BMI, diet quality, physical-activity levels and health-related quality of life at baseline, 12 months and 24 months across a minimum of 2,000 children per city .
Early modeling indicates the program can detect a 0.3 kg/m² reduction in mean BMI at the country level—enough to shift roughly 8 % of participating children out of the obesity category. If replicated nationally, such a change could cut future Type-2-diabetes prevalence among these cohorts by 13 %, according to peer-reviewed projections published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
CBH has committed $28 million in seed funding, with additional support from Novo Nordisk’s Changing Childhood Obesity partnership and in-kind contributions from municipal transit and parks departments. A competitive micro-grant pool—$5,000 to $25,000 per proposal—is open to community organizations for pop-up play spaces, culturally adapted cooking classes and youth-led social-media campaigns.
“We cannot police what kids eat, but we can reshape the streets, stores and social norms that surround them,” noted Councillor Amina Kgosana, member of the Cape Town Health Portfolio and COPI city co-chair. “By pairing hard infrastructure with grassroots storytelling, we are building a movement that outlives any single budget cycle.”
Recruitment of participating schools and after-care sites begins December 1, 2025, with interventions starting March 2026. Aggregate findings will be released quarterly via an open-data dashboard to help other cities replicate successful components.
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