A One Health Strategy to Tackle Obesity

The prevalence of obesity and related health problems has increased drastically in recent decades. By focusing on the phenomenon within the context of changing relationships between humans, other living species, and the environment, the article opens the way to a One Health perspective for understanding and tackle obesity. The study presents empirical data based on interviews with patients and doctors in a hospital highly specialized in the treatment of metabolic diseases and their associated pathologies. Among the results of the research is that a significant part of the patients interviewed have internalized norms, attitudes and behaviours associated with a state of marginalization and isolation. These findings emphasize the crucial yet often overlooked role of meaningful interpersonal relationships at the meso-level in the obesogenic environment.