The development of the NOURISHING and MOVING benchmarking tools to monitor and evaluate national governments' nutrition and physical activity policies to address obesity in the European region.

Despite assurances of government action, the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and overweight and obesity is continuing to grow at an alarming rate both globally and in Europe. The NOURISHING and MOVING policy frameworks outline a comprehensive set of policy actions across 6 domains and 16 policy areas in which national governments should take action to promote healthy diets and physical activity. Monitoring and benchmarking these policies is important for assessing progress on obesity and NCD prevention. This paper describes the participatory process for developing benchmarking tools structured around the policy areas of the NOURISHING and MOVING policy frameworks. They consist of a set of indicators and policy attributes that assess government support in promoting healthy nutrition and physical activity. They are adolescent relevant as they capture policy actions that target or impact adolescents. The benchmarking tools are designed to monitor progress on national government action on nutrition and physical activity based on aspirational standards. They will be applied in 27 European countries initially and are aimed at policymakers, researchers, and civil society, to track progress, develop the research infrastructure on effectiveness of NCD prevention policies at population level, and support advocacy efforts.

Scan of physical activity policy actions in Europe: Lessons learned from populating the MOVING database.

Adequate levels of physical activity are important for population health. Policy databases can track, monitor, and compare the development and implementation of physical activity policy actions and are populated by different methods. The new MOVING database, developed through the Confronting Obesity: Co-creating Policy with Youth (CO-CREATE) project, collates governmental policy actions designed to increase physical activity and is populated by an in-depth scan of implemented national policy actions. This paper presents lessons learned from conducting the policy scan across 27 European countries. Policy actions were identified using a structured search protocol from preselected sources, assessed against pre-specified inclusion criteria and verified by an in-country expert. 625 eligible national implemented policy actions were identified. Challenges included policy actions falling out of scope, a lack of available information on policy actions, difficulty in identifying policy actions using specific search terms, and increased resource requirements for translation of policy actions into English. The scan indicated improvements, which informed protocol modifications. Identifying the challenges and opportunities around conducting a policy scan is necessary to understand and assess the reliability, validity, and utility of a policy database. The policy scan will help to deliver a comprehensive picture of physical activity policy actions across Europe.