| Summary: | Introduction: The increased prevalence of overweight and especially obesity affects the entire population in the world regardless of age, sex and race, and has become a global public health problem. Following the WHO European Charter on counteracting Obesity and the EC White Paper “A strategy for Europe on Nutrition, overweight and Obesity related health issues”, highlighting the role of local authorities which have the great potential in creating the environments and opportunities for healthy living and that action should be taken at both micro and macro levels and in different settings. Therefore, governments from the European countries have created, developed and implemented, several obesity prevention and interventions/programs at national, regional and local levels. Objective: The aim of this review was to find and subsequently gather information about interventions/programs at local or municipal level in the European Region, which are intended to prevent overweight and/or obesity in children, adolescents, adults and elderly through the promotion of physical activity and change of food habits. Methods: The search included scientific and gray literature. The scientific search engine was focused on PubMed, Medline and the World Health Organization, while gray literature was found using Google browser. Results: From the 659 papers and websites found, 62 papers and websites (from 2006 to 2011) were included in this review comprising 23 interventions/programs. 10 were community-based, 6 community- and school-based 6 school-based, and 1 family-based community interventions. Most of these 73,9% aimed to intervene in children, adolescents and families to change or improve food habits and promote physical activity; 21,7% aimed to intervene in children, adolescents, adults and elderly to promote physical activity and 4,3% aimed to intervene in children to change or improve food habits. Conclusions: Overall 60,8% of the programs/interventions found proved to be effective in preventing and/or reducing overweight and/or obesity and improvement of food habits and physical activity levels on the target groups mentioned at the local or municipality level in the European Region.
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