In a major development, Poddar Foundation has partnered with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Mr. Kewal Kapoor, a well-known IEC expert, to curb issues such as obesity and ill-health plaguing the country from a very young age. With this visionary initiative, Poddar Foundation aims to proactively target health issues that arise at a much later stage in life from the very beginning by offering preventive measures during childhood itself. Corrective measures will be in the form of suggestions that alter the health and food environments. This initiative will be initially rolled out across schools in Maharashtra.
This initiative comes at a time when the latest Wold Health Organisation (WHO) report shows, around 22 % prevalence rate of obesity was reported in children and adolescents aged between 5-19 years over the last 5 years in India. Globally, the trend is high among children under 5 years of age with at least 41 million found to be obese or overweight in 2014.
Poddar Foundation’s Managing Trustee, Dr. Prakriti Poddar and IMA Maharashtra have tied up to create awareness in arresting obesity, mental health deterioration and its stigmas along with other related areas of good physical and mental health. IMA has committed its mammoth team of 37,000 member doctors and medical professionals to fight obesity on the ground level. While for its part, Poddar Foundation will develop a digital repository for children, parents and teachers to educate, empower and assist and educate them.
Dr. Prakriti Poddar, an expert mental health therapist and counselor, said, “We look forward to garner suitable support from the Government of Maharashtra and relevant corporate CSR programs. As a team we are aggressively taking concrete measures to ensure that the program accords the highest priority as it affects the future wellbeing of our country. Mr. Kewal Kapoor and IMA as our partners will bring on board years of wisdom, experience and knowledge to ensure a wide reach of preventive measures capable of curbing such issues right from the child’s formative years.”
Dr. Jayesh Lele, President, Indian Medical Association (IMA) also expressed his views on this association. He said, “Various studies suggest that mindfulness can help treat or avoid obesity in children as it helps them control overeating impulses. We intend to consciously treat such kids through this initiative and create a strong awareness
about it. This is a perennial issue amongst growing children which needs immediate attention.”
Mr. Rohit Poddar, Managing Director, Poddar Housing, said, “With Dr. Prakriti at the helm, we see our Foundation contributing great value to addressing and helping solve the issues caused by mental health deterioration. In this day and age of stress, strife and inequalities, tools such as this one, that Dr. Prakriti is developing, with the help of the Government of Maharashtra and concerned Corporates via their CSR initiatives, will be a valuable mechanism for awareness and greatly help in the mental health space. I wish Dr. Poddar all the success in this important mission of addressing mental health and the well-being of our Nation.”
The Poddar Foundation will soon be making a presentation to the Honorable Chief Minister of Maharashtra to press upon the urgency of a time bound program to be implemented.
