Childhood obesity: WHO's first guidelines and the Greek programme's reported results
WHO recommends family-centred programmes combining diet, physical activity and behaviour change. Results from Greece's national programme are ministry-reported and identified as such.
The World Health Organization published its first global guidelines on the integrated management of obesity in children and adolescents on 7 October 2026. WHO estimates that about 170 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 were living with obesity in 2024, while prevalence in that age group rose from 2% in 1990 to 8% in 2024.
The guidelines treat obesity as a complex chronic disease and call for long-term, non-stigmatising care. They are not individual medical advice: each child should be assessed and treated by an appropriately qualified health professional.
What WHO recommends
WHO's strong recommendation is for structured, multicomponent programmes combining healthy eating, physical activity and behaviour-change techniques, with active involvement from families or caregivers. Mental health should be assessed and supported alongside physical health.
Digital tools may be used as a supplement under parent or caregiver supervision, but the recommendation is conditional and does not replace professional follow-up.
Children aged 0–9: what is not recommended
For children up to age nine, WHO does not recommend weight-loss medication, bariatric surgery or weight-loss devices. The focus is on age-appropriate, family-centred lifestyle interventions.
Adolescents aged 10–19
For adolescents, approved medicines may be considered only as part of a supervised multicomponent programme when lifestyle interventions have not been sufficient. Bariatric surgery is limited to carefully selected cases of severe obesity and requires a specialist multidisciplinary team.
What Greece's health ministry reports
In a statement issued the same day, Greece's Ministry of Health set a national target to reduce the share of children with overweight or obesity from 37.5% in 2019 to 24.5% by 2030. It also said that more than 2,000 families had received free dietary teleconsultations through the national programme, implemented with UNICEF Greece and Harokopio University among its partners.
According to the ministry, 80% of participating families whose child had overweight or obesity reached a normal weight, programme dropout was 12%, and BMI z-score improvement was recorded for 79% after six sessions and 89% after twelve. The statement also reported clinical improvement in 36% of diabetes cases and 60% of hypertension cases.
How to read the Greek results
These percentages are results reported by the Ministry of Health. UNICEF confirms the partnership and the existence of the national programme, but the sources reviewed did not include an independently published evaluation substantiating every individual figure. They should therefore not be presented as independently verified clinical findings.
English translation of the Greek edition · Read in Greek