WHO releases first global guidelines on childhood obesity

For the first time, the World Health Organization has published global guidelines specifically dedicated to managing obesity in children and adolescents. This is a document that sets out indications aimed at health systems and health professionals, not individual patients, and seeks to standardize approaches that have so far been inconsistent across countries and facilities.

According to WHO, in 2024 approximately 170 million people aged 5 to 19 worldwide were living with obesity, a prevalence that has quadrupled since 1990. The figure illustrates the growth of the phenomenon on a global scale over more than thirty years, and places childhood obesity among the public health issues that the organization has followed with greater attention over the past decade.

The organization regards obesity as a chronic and relapsing disease, not an isolated episode to be treated once, and recommends structured interventions involving nutrition, physical activity and behavior, with the direct involvement of families in managing care pathways. The proposed approach insists on the continuity of interventions over time, rather than on one-off measures, and on the role of family units as active participants in treatment pathways, not merely as recipients of instructions.

The news currently comes from a single source (World Health Organization, reported by the Federazione Nazionale degli Ordini dei Biologi); no further independent confirmations appear in the available material.

The guidelines fall within the framework of WHO’s institutional recommendations and do not constitute direct therapeutic indications for individuals, but general criteria intended to guide national health policies in managing a phenomenon that the organization itself describes as growing sharply on a global scale, with expected repercussions on health systems in the coming years.