World Obesity Day 2024: Talking about obesity across the globe

On 4 March 2024, the world united in a collective effort to ensure happier, healthier and longer lives for all.

The goal of the 2024 campaign was to leverage the power of World Obesity Day to start cross-cutting conversations, by talking about ‘Obesity and…’. We focused on three pillars of health, youth and our world to see how we can address obesity together. This ignited conversations around hundreds of related topics, such as #ObesityAndHypertension, #ObesityAndFoodSystems, and so many more.

Communities around the world rallied to share knowledge, advocate for environments that reduce diseases like obesity, and start conversations about the complex interaction of different factors that impact, or are impacted by, obesity.

Every year, World Obesity Day is supported by thousands of individuals, organisations and alliances, involving millions around the world - and 2024 was no exception! We experienced remarkable engagement again this year, with preliminary figures showing nearly 220 million impressions on X across the hashtags, and 6.2 billion press reach! These figures represent engagement on 4 March only, and we expect the numbers to rise as we see the impact of ongoing conversations. 

Global engagement and action

In response to our call for stories, events, videos, photos and activities, we received nearly 200 submissions from around the world! Many were uploaded to our WOD map, while others were shared on our social media channels.

We launched two exciting new initiatives for WOD this year and were delighted to see how many people participated:

• Walk for WOD - to raise awareness about obesity and World Obesity Day alongside encouraging a sense of community.
• Illumination of monuments – we asked members and collaborators to illuminate monuments in their city or country in purple.

Members, partners, lived experience voices and allies took part in a wide variety of activities – here are just a few amazing stories, from local community awareness and events, to high-level advocacy campaigns, and everything in between!

There are plenty more events that took place – do have a look at our WOD map and our social media accounts (Instagram, X and LinkedIn) to view more of the amazing activities that organisations and individuals participated in all over the globe.

Talking about obesity and advancing action

We hosted and participated in a number of high-level events this WOD. These include:

• SCOPE held a webinar on the theme of 'Obesity & Women’s Health'. Dr Ada Cuevas (Chile), Chair of World Obesity’s Clinical Care Committee, delivered a fascinating presentation outlining the prevalence of obesity in women globally and describing the impact of obesity across the woman’s life course. This webinar was attended by more than 100 participants.
• The Global Obesity Coalition - World Obesity Federation, UNICEF and WHO - hosted a global youth-led webinar to talk about 'Obesity & Youth: Young people catalysing change' and to unlock conversations around how this topic affects the lives of young people around the world and the concrete change they are demanding. This global event brought together almost 300 participants from around the world.
• Members of our leadership team also presented in webinars on and around WOD including the IFSO World Obesity Day Roundtable, FIP’s ‘Obesity: Understanding the disease, nutritional approaches and the new pharmacological interventions’, Rotary District 7030’s ‘Let's talk obesity: DG Brian's Lunch Webinar’, and a webinar about aligning obesity objectives in Uruguay.

World Obesity Atlas 2024 and other significant publications

In the days leading up to World Obesity Day, we released our sixth annual World Obesity Atlas, providing a comprehensive overview of obesity rates and trends worldwide, with clear projections as to how the fallout from obesity is likely to affect the world. One of the key findings is that no area of the world is unaffected by the consequences of obesity and the poorest suffer the most, at ever younger ages. The Atlas also provides compelling evidence of how lack of obesity care in health systems is driving all the major NCDs including cancer and diabetes, and it underscores how factors driving economic development are contributing to obesity trends.

This coincided with the publication in The Lancet of new data from a study by the NCD-Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), in collaboration with WHO, which estimates that there are now over one billion people around the world living with obesity. 

Download the 2024 Atlas here:

We also launched the first of our planned 'Obesity in numbers' series in the UAE, where we review the state of obesity through the latest statistics. As part of our ongoing collaboration with colleagues in the Middle East and North Africa, this first statistical briefing explores current overweight and obesity prevalence (and its distribution in the population), projections, the economic impact of overweight and obesity, and the impact of obesity on other non-communicable diseases.

In addition, to mark World Obesity Day, our CEO, Johanna Ralston, President-Elect, Dr Simón Barquera, and Prof. Kent Buse of the George Institute, and Chair of our Policy and Prevention Committee, published an opinion piece in the BMJ Today, where they call for the world to be talking differently about obesity.

Keep the momentum going – build your networks

Working together to build a bigger network helps to provide a more collective approach to obesity. Let’s keep the conversation going to continue building momentum towards strong national action.

You could reach out to an organisation working on another health issue, either a different type of obesity organisation, or a group working on a different issue that has overlapping aims i.e. diabetes, heart disease, children’s health, nutrition, advocacy groups, climate change, education, etc. Looking outside of your national context can also help you to identify what works and how best to progress action. We have over 100 members all over the world – why not reach out to a fellow obesity organisation?

Visit our member directory here

World Obesity Day is just one day – but you can continue building your network, having conversations and calling for action all year long to build momentum. Please do reach out to us if you have any questions, or ideas for collaboration.