About us
Cochrane Nutrition and Physical Activity provides a hub of expertise on interventions and strategies to reduce disease burden related to poor nutrition and physical inactivity by supporting the generation and synthesis of evidence identified as priorities by key national, regional and international stakeholders. This includes inputs into methods required for effective and efficient synthesis of the impact of complex interventions, stakeholder engagement with global partners including the World Health Organization, and implementation and knowledge translation in these areas.
The core groups partnering in this Thematic Group are Cochrane Public Health, Cochrane Germany, Cochrane Nutrition, as well as the Nutrition and Food Security sub-group of The Campbell Collaboration.
The Cochrane Nutrition and Physical Thematic Group's topic scope includes:
1. Priority nutrition-related interventions or strategies to improve diets and nutrition at individual, community, and population levels to reduce the triple burden of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight) and its associated consequences, towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals relevant to nutrition and health. This will include interventions or strategies related to:
- Diets (e.g. quantity, quality, diversity, safety, adequacy)
- Consumer behaviours (e.g. choices and awareness related to acquiring, preparing, cooking, storing and eating food)
- Food environments (e.g. availability, access, affordability, acceptability, information, guidelines and advertising, food safety and quality, policy conditions)
- Food supply (e.g. retail, marketing, packaging, processing, manufacturing, storage, trade, production)
2. Priority population or community-level physical activity interventions, and/or activities to reduce sedentary behaviour, within the context of the four broader categories for action defined in the WHO’s Global Action Plan On Physical Activity 2018-2030: 1) creating active societies; 2) creating active environments; 3) creating active people, and; 4) creating active systems. These include:
- Interventions operating at the population (non-individual) level (e.g. community, systems, policy, legislation and regulation, as well as single and multi-country national physical activity strategies or action plans)
- Interventions in settings outside healthcare (e.g. education, transport, the built environment, agriculture, child care and social services)
- Strategies to improve the translation of physical activity intervention into policy and practice
- Assessment of pathways, methods, effects and evaluation approaches of physical activity interventions scaled-up to the population level
The following will generally be considered as out of scope:
- physical activity interventions for individuals’ management, treatment or targeted prevention of specific clinical conditions, nor as part of rehabilitation programs
- pharmaceutical-only or herbal medicines and products
- plants or other components not routinely used in food (e.g. Echinacea)
- non-nutritional applications of nutrients or bioactive food components (e.g. topical)
The group is keen to cover multi-component interventions and strategies addressing priority global health burdens related to poor nutrition, sedentary behaviour and related risk factors within the environments in which people of all ages eat, move, play, grow, work, live and age. Examples include obesity prevention, settings-based strategies and multi-sectoral actions to reduce non-communicable disease risk. Supported reviews should have a considerable focus on reducing inequities and addressing the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged people and population groups.
Team
Group Directors
 |
Luke Wolfenden - School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, Australia |
 |
Celeste Naude - Centre for Evidence-based Health Care, Stellenbosch University, South Africa |
Group Executives
 |
Lukas Schwingshackl - Institute for Evidence in Medicine, University of Freiburg, Germany |
 |
Solange Durao - Health Systems Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, South Africa |
 |
Sam McCrabb - School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, Australia |
 |
Hayley Christian - Telethon Kids Institute and School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia, Australia |
Our Plans
Our vision is to be an independent, globally recognised go-to place for evidence syntheses aligned with our scope.
Our goals are to:
- support and enable evidence-informed decision-making for policy and practice by advancing the preparation and impact of high quality, relevant evidence syntheses;
- be a collaborative and sustainable component of Cochrane’s ecosystem for producing high-quality, trusted evidence; and
- add appreciable value to Cochrane’s vision of a world of better health for all people.
Some of our objectives include:
- Increasing the relevance, timeliness and quality of evidence synthesis aligned with our scope by actively engaging in priority-setting with key evidence users and decision makers, producing high quality evidence syntheses on priority topics, and strengthening methods for trustworthy evidence synthesis and evidence use relevant to nutrition and physical activity questions.
- Increasing the impact and visibility of Cochrane evidence synthesis aligned with our scope across all target audiences through coordinated knowledge translation, and building demand for evidence-informed decision-making across all actors in the health decision making ecosystem.
News
News about Cochrane Nutrition and Physical Activity is coming soon.