Dear colleagues and friends,
I am delighted and honoured to write to you my first letter as President of our society.
The complexity in the etiology of obesity and the challenges in the prevention and treatment of the disease require encouragement for experts in the field . Ever since its foundation almost 30 years ago, ECOG has aimed to increase the understanding of childhood obesity, develop clinical and scientific knowledge and bring together health professionals from a broad range of relevant disciplines.
Moving forward, it is my intention to continue the work initiated by my predecessors (Board Members and Past Presidents) and hopefully be able to to serve your needs in the years of my mandate. The new board´s top priority is „translating science into daily practice” and to this aim we have developed two framework programmes which are shortly outlined below.
I would really appreciate a greater involvement of all our members therefore I encourage you to get in contact with ideas, feedback and suggestions.
ECOG Dissemination Programme
This essential framework programme includes four high level initiatives:
28th ECOG´s Annual Congress 2018. This year congress will be held in Porto from November 14 to November 17. You are all warmly invited to join us for three days of scientific talks and networking opportunities. Please have a look at the very attractive programme for this year.
ECOG´s Childhood Obesity eBook. This initiative is a ground-breaking and ongoing success story since its launch about 3 years ago. The First Free Reference eBook on Childhood and Adolescent Obesity is now available in 5 languages. Next to the development of new content and translations in more languages, we are working on the development of “hands on – how to” eModules – to further broaden the outreach of the eBook high quality and referenced content.
The Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism is now the official ECOG journal. I am very pleased to inform you that from now on, all ECOG members will have free access to this reputed journal that is now facing an all-time high impact factor of 3.015.
And last, but not least: we have redesigned our website which will provide a user-friendly platform to disseminate information and keep you updated about our activities.
ECOG Education and Training
This framework programme includes three ongoing initiatives:
YOUNG ECOG, a platform to facilitate connections between young ECOG members and more experienced ones. The Young ECOG platform is designed to go hand in hand with the ECOG
The ECOG Mentoring Programme, which will be introduced in Porto.
Our effort to educate and train will also be realized through our participation to the Erasmus+ funded project „Tackling adolescent obesity and promoting inclusion through nutrition trainings for disadvantaged youth“. The project main obejctives is to train adolescent students, aged 15 to 18, and educators across Europe to pursue a healthy diet and provide them with the proper tools to make better decisions on the food they consume. The project’s goals include persuading participants of the importance of paying attention to the composition of daily-consumed food products and teach students how to read and understand nutrition labels. The project is due to kick off in Autumn and we will provide more information in due course.
We have busy and exciting years ahead of us. I count on you because I strongly believe that we can make a difference if we work together.
Yours sincerely
