CIELO team’s first face-to-face meeting: a further step toward child obesity prevention

Researchers from 12 universities working on The Erasmus+ CIELO project, Innovative Curriculum for Latin America to Build Capacity in HEIs to Prevent Obesity, had their first in-person meeting in Chile to share the progress of the six Work Packages developing efficient tools to improve professors, scholars, and health professionals’ capacities to prevent child obesity and promote mental health.

CIELO partners from Chile, Costa Rica, México, Latvia, Finland, and Poland, met at Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez (UCSH) on May 7-9. UCSH “Salud, Humanización e Inclusión” research core organized the meeting in collaboration with Universidad de Alba, both CIELO partners.

Besides the CIELO consortium, UCSH academic authorities, directors of schools from the UCSH Faculty of Health Sciences, students, and special guests attended the event.

Lily Bethencourt, CIELO Project manager, outlined that this project goal is to prepare our field in education to develop and provide tools and solutions to tackle childhood obesity and promote mental health. Also, participants listened to Dr. Guido Girardi’s presentation “Child Obesity, a Serious Public Health Issue-What Have We Done and What Should We Do?“. This presentation was about a law that has become a model for addressing the serious issue of obesity.

Members of the six Work Packages presented their advances on May 8 and 9 and agreed to have the next face-to-face meeting this September from 3-5 in Finland.

Research from the CIELO team that attended the first meeting:

Latvia: Lily Bethencourt, from Riga Technical University.
Finland: Niina Katajapuu y Maika Kummel, from Turku University of Applied Sciences.
Poland: Marta Witkowska, from The University of Gdańsk.
México: María Anabell Covarrubias y Jorge Cabrera, Universidad La Salle Noroeste; Lorena Broca Domínguez, Universidad La Salle Oaxaca; Francisco Doria Mendoza, Universidad La Salle Victoria; Dulce María Meneses Ruiz, María Bertha Fortoul y María Teresa Velasco, Universidad La Salle México; Joaquín Liedo, Universidad La Salle Pachuca.
Costa Rica: Félix M. Cañet-Prades, Universidad para la Cooperación Internacional; Fiorella Bulgarelli, Universidad Hispanoamericana.
Chile: Flavio Carrión y Raquel Ibáñez, Universidad del Alba; Sebastián Loyola Arroyo, Héctor Opazo, Sergio König y Sandra Mora, Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez.