CathNews New Zealand

Professor Boyd Swinburn believes churches in the Pacific Islands could be effective preachers of the good news about weight loss because any effective obesity programme needs to address socio-cultural barriers and churches are often the custodians of culture.

He has reached this conclusion after a three-year project to reduce obesity levels in the Pacific which worked well in Australia but was ineffective in Fiji, Tonga and in the Pacific area in South Auckland.

He said some socio-cultural studies they had done at the same time to try to understand what some of the socio-cultural barriers might be to undertaking healthy eating and physical activity led him to conclude that these barriers are probably the major reason why this approach was not as successful in the Pacific populations as it was in the European populations.

After some discussion with church leaders Swinburn recognised that “the church was actually critically important as a if you like, a custodian of culture and determinant of culture, and so if there was going to be any shift in cultural norms, these leaders felt that it really needed to come from within the church or the church was the best kind of vehicle to be able to achieve that.”

Boyd Swinburn is Professor of Population, Nutrition and Global Health at Deakin University, and one of Australia’s leading experts on obesity.

Source

• ABC
• Image: Encyclopedia of New Zealand