WHO NCD Lab Innovators at the Global Forum for Adolescents: The power of young voices to counter harmful marketing practices that drive NCDs

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and mental health conditions can have a significant impact on children and adolescents. Risk factors such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol often negatively affect child and adolescent health and wellbeing and cause poor health outcomes in adulthood. Some 70 per cent of the premature deaths that occur among adults are estimated to stem from health-related behaviours that originate in childhood and adolescence.

The prevalence of NCD mortality and morbidity is worsened by industry players who continue to flood the market and encroach on community environments with unhealthy products, spanning from alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy foods including sugary beverages and junk food. Commercial entities spend billions of dollars every year on advertising and marketing strategies that encourage the consumption of unhealthy products among young people, which is at odds with the human rights to health, accurate information, privacy and freedom from exploitation, as codified in the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, UN Declaration of Human Rights, and other international treaties and conventions.

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