Multi-Pillar Framework for Children Anti-Obesity Behaviour Building on an EU Biobank, Micro-Moments and Mobile Recommendation Systems
The WHO European Regional Obesity Report 2022 warns that obesity rates in the EU have reached epidemic levels, with no countries on track to meet the 2025 WHO goal of halting obesity’s rise. The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted diet and activity patterns, exacerbating the problem.
Childhood and adolescent obesity remain especially concerning due to their long-term physical, psychological, and economic impacts. Addressing obesity in younger age groups offers the best chance for sustainable health improvements and reduced healthcare burdens.
To tackle this, key actions include leveraging health data to understand obesity trends, personalizing interventions on diet and activity, and enhancing collaboration between researchers, healthcare, and communities to improve policy and awareness.
BIO-STREAMS offers a comprehensive framework to tackle childhood and adolescent obesity by addressing key areas:
- Health Data Management: Includes collecting, curating, de-identifying, harmonizing, and regulating health data.
- Knowledge Handling: Focuses on access, analysis, sharing, and application of information.
- Risk Assessment: Uses biomarkers to evaluate metabolic risks.
- Prevention and Healthy Living: Incorporates interventions in nutrition, exercise, and psychological support.
- Community Engagement: Promotes guideline dissemination, health literacy, citizen participation, and stakeholder collaboration.
The project brings together diverse partners to develop and implement solutions across 7 hospitals in 6 EU countries and 5 schools in 5 EU countries. Core initiatives include:
- EU Childhood/Adolescence Obesity Biobank: A centralized data-sharing hub for standardized data collection and innovation, featuring demographic, behavioral, clinical, genetic, and cost data.
- BIO-STREAMS Obesity Platform: Offers tools like a knowledge hub for policy and best practices, personalized risk assessments, tailored prevention programs, and mobile tools for data and lifestyle management.
- BIO-STREAMS Community Network: Facilitates public engagement and professional access, advocates evidence-based approaches, combats stigma through weight-neutral policies, and encourages healthier environments.
These components aim to improve research, prevention, and societal awareness while fostering sustainable behavioral changes in young populations.
Key Objectives
BIO-STREAMS aims to address childhood obesity through a comprehensive framework integrating scientific, technical, clinical, societal, and business objectives. It will establish an EU-wide Obesity Biobank for real and synthetic datasets and a cloud-based BIO-STREAMS Platform to support knowledge sharing, risk assessment, and personalized lifestyle recommendations. The project focuses on creating a unified data model, robust regulatory frameworks for secure data use, and machine learning tools to assess risks and generate insights. Clinical protocols and community roadmaps will promote healthier environments in hospitals and schools, while a multidisciplinary network will drive policy integration, health literacy, and market readiness.
