The implementation plan for Shanghai’s “Weight Management Year” has been released, initiating precise interventions for overweight and obese students as part of a pilot program.
How Should Different Populations Conduct Targeted Weight Management?
Recently, the “Weight Management Year” implementation plan for Shanghai has been released. This plan was jointly formulated by 16 departments, including the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, the Shanghai Patriotic Health Campaign Committee Office, and the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Commission.
The plan highlights that weight levels are closely related to human health, with abnormal weight, particularly overweight and obesity, being significant risk factors for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and some cancers. Surveys indicate that the overweight and obesity situation among Shanghai residents is serious and requires urgent intervention and improvement.
Based on relevant national documents related to “Healthy China,” the plan is divided into five parts with 16 major measures. It aims to create a supportive environment for weight management within approximately three years, starting from 2024, significantly improving Shanghai residents’ awareness and skills in weight management, promoting healthy lifestyles, gradually enhancing residents’ health literacy, and establishing a positive environment for universal participation and benefit in weight management, leading to improvement in abnormal weight conditions for certain populations.
The plan focuses on categorized guidance for different populations and professional, scientific weight management strategies. For pregnant women and new mothers, it emphasizes providing integrated nutritional services during pregnancy, maintaining appropriate weight before pregnancy, reasonable weight gain during pregnancy, reducing postpartum weight retention, and preventing low birth weight or macrosomia. For infants and preschool children, the focus is on comprehensive monitoring of physical growth, nutritional and feeding guidance, and promoting physical activity and exercise. For students, the plan encourages forming habits of dynamically measuring height, weight, and waist circumference, assisting overweight and obese students to implement strategies of “reduce intake, increase physical activity, build confidence in weight loss, adjust dietary structure, measure weight, and measure waist circumference,” while developing standards for screening and referral of childhood obesity and intervention toolkits, and piloting precise interventions for overweight and obese students.
For working populations, the plan emphasizes guiding weight monitoring and regular health checks, cultivating healthy lifestyles, and recommending that workplaces establish fitness stations or corners to enrich employees’ physical activities and enhance their health literacy and physical fitness. For the elderly, the focus is on guiding suitable meals, appropriate exercise, and maintaining a proper weight. Chronic disease populations will undergo monitoring of weight, waist circumference, body composition, and blood lipid levels, with follow-up management providing exercise intervention and nutritional advice.
The plan also underscores broad social participation, which includes creating a supportive social environment, strengthening family roles, standardizing service models, utilizing traditional Chinese medicine, and advocating new consumption concepts.
At the social level, it promotes weight management in families, communities, healthcare institutions, restaurants, and cafeterias, enhancing the roles of families and community health self-management groups, guiding enterprises to develop new weight management products, and diversifying scientific exercise methods and equipment. At the healthcare level, it encourages medical institutions to establish outpatient services for weight management and obesity prevention, develop graded weight management standards, and offer reasonable dietary and exercise prescriptions through clinical services and family doctor contracts, providing standardized medical services including traditional Chinese medicine for key populations.
Furthermore, the plan places great importance on public education, enhancing awareness of weight management. This includes strengthening scientific guidance, innovating methods of public science education, and boosting science outreach capabilities, emphasizing scientific, authoritative, targeted, and effective information dissemination through the preparation of citizen health knowledge booklets on “Healthy Weight,” organizing involvement from experts and volunteers, and utilizing diverse media channels for comprehensive science promotion.
Simultaneously, the plan calls for fully leveraging information technology such as the internet, the Internet of Things, and big data to innovate weight management models, develop smart wearable devices for weight management, and promote the application of artificial intelligence technology in creating personalized nutrition and exercise intervention plans.
