Improving data on overweight, obesity and undernutrition among children under the age of 5 years in the WHO European Region

Introduction: It is important for countries to be able to examine their progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals on malnutrition. Unfortunately, in the WHO European Region, there is limited and sparse crosssectional anthropometric measured data at national level from children under five years of age. The WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases in collaboration with WHO Headquarters and as part of its participation in the European Union funded project “Science Technology Obesity Policy” (STOP), is exploring to address these data gaps. Therefore, in October 2022, the WHO Regional Office for Europe convened an expert meeting to discuss the current overview of data availability, data collection, and next steps to move forward. Methods: Key stakeholders working in the areas related to childhood obesity surveillance were invited to this meeting to discuss and explore the availability of data, the feasibility, generalisability and practicality of anthropometric data collection in children under five and suggest next steps to move forward. Results: Addressing the challenge of childhood obesity in Europe was discussed, as well as the importance of anthropometric data on children under five years of age. Results of a survey from 31 European countries on the availability of anthropometric data in this age group were presented, focusing on data available from “routine health checks”. Future work is needed to identify the feasibility of accessing this data for surveillance and research purposes. Three Member States, namely Italy, Portugal and Latvia, presented their experience in data collection and perspectives on how to improve data on children under five. Discussions took place on the feasibility, generalisability and practicality of anthropometric data collection, and expected challenges and solutions. It was discussed that further explorations need to be done to harmonize joint data collection efforts coming from different sources within national health information systems. Conclusion: We concluded that it is important to move on from the idea of a perfect, ideal data source. All data sources — and the possibility of combining data from different sources — should be explored. Latvia has demonstrated the feasibility of a kindergarten-based survey and several countries have indicated willingness to participate in similar surveys. Other data sources should be further explored — it is important to gather enough information from routine data sources to be able to use and interpret these data (and combine them with other data). This is particularly important because kindergarten-based data will reach the older children in the under-five age group, while there tends to be higher coverage of younger children through routine data from paediatric systems.