University of Coimbra project launches campaign to promote healthy habits to combat obesity
In addition to a video campaign, several activities will take place in March to mark World Obesity Day, including a survey on the habits of university students in Europe, a workshop on sustainable eating, and a walk.
The video campaign "Decoding health: small steps, big changes", produced by the team of the research project PAS GRAS – De-risking metabolic, environmental and behavioral determinants of obesity in children, adolescents, and young adults, led by the University of Coimbra (UC), will be launched throughout March, the month of World Obesity Day (4 March). This campaign of seven short videos includes several other initiatives: a questionnaire on the habits of university students in Europe, a workshop on sustainable healthy eating and a walk.
The video series aims to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence weight gain, such as stress, sleep, diet, physical and social activity, or contact with nature. They will be released once a week and will be available on the PAS GRAS YouTube channel. The videos were created by Pedro Evangelista as part of his Master's thesis in Design and Multimedia, under the supervision of Paul Hardman and Catarina Parente, professors at the Department of Architecture of the UC Faculty of Sciences and Technology (FCTUC), and Anabela Marisa Azul, researcher at the UC Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC-UC). This was carried out within the framework of PAS GRAS, with the participation of researchers from the project.
The team behind the videos highlights that "interdisciplinary collaboration between students and researchers, combining design creativity and scientific evidence, is crucial to developing proposals and messages that have an effective impact on the public and public health. This was the aim of this video series." The videos will be disseminated across Europe through the channels of the various PAS GRAS partner organisations and the European Cluster of Obesity Research Projects .
Researchers in Portugal and other European countries will conduct a questionnaire among higher education students that "aims to provide a broad overview of university students' perceptions and behaviours—namely physical activity, eating habits, and psychosocial, environmental, and socio-economic circumstances. The results of this study will be used in the obesity risk assessment tool to be developed as part of the project," explain the PAS GRAS coordination.
The PAS GRAS project is coordinated by the consortium Centre for Innovation in Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB), composed of CNC-UC, the Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research (iCBR), the Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing (MIA – Portugal), and GeneT: Gene Therapy Center of Excellence in Portugal
Further information on the activities promoted by PAS GRAS are available here and on the social networks of the project: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.