Neglecting obesity in the 2025 NCD agenda will leave one billion people behind
As the fourth high level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) approaches, Bai Li and colleagues warn that failing to tackle obesity will set back progress on NCDs The obesity epidemic is one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. Yet the draft political declaration of the 2025 UN General Assembly high level meeting on the prevention and control of NCDs falls short in confronting the obesity crisis.1 Analysis by authors working in the UN system saw a continual weakening of the previous political declaration on NCDs (2018) in relation to both the nature of commitments and the specificity of interventions.2 The authors blamed industry influence on the process for the weakening of the political declaration.3 The current third draft of the 2025 political declaration provides stronger language related to action that is people centred and approaches that are based on human rights—both critical to an effective response to obesity.4 Ho
