The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and, in this case, the Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes Institute, have made a considerable effort. In terms of funding, they have made obesity a priority. Furthermore, they have made significant changes to the way they determine what is a research priority. That includes placing a greater focus in research on all the information needed to develop public policy. Research generally focusses mostly on basic science and genetics, but that is not enough to meet the challenge of obesity. So, they have worked very hard to change the program's direction, even though I believe current funding is woefully inadequate. In my opinion, that concerns the federal government.
In terms of programs to treat obesity, there are very few that are considered to be effective. I don't believe the CDCs have done any kind of evaluation. There are some programs being delivered in the United States. However, to my knowledge, the most promising ones have been developed by a researcher in Israel. She has demonstrated that programs were more effective when parents participated on their own, as opposed to when children were involved on their own, or when parents and children were involved. These are very useful indications in terms of the kinds of best practices we should be looking at for treating child obesity.