Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

The WHO's Global Strategy for Women's, Children's, and Adolescents' Health (2016-2030) envisions a world where everyone, no matter where they live, can achieve their full potential for physical and mental health, access social and economic opportunities, and contribute to thriving, sustainable societies. Nigeria faces many challenges in reaching this vision, such as limited resources, high inflation, natural disasters, political instability, insurgency, poverty, and public health crises. Effective health-promotion strategies that prevent nutritional deficiencies, physical inactivity, sedentary behaviours, poor sleep habits, and NCDs in Nigeria are urgently needed. Our project aims to establish a partnership between researchers and knowledge-users from Canada and Nigeria to discuss emerging issues related to adolescent metabolic health among 11 to 14-year-old students in Nigeria. In addition to holding planning meetings and school visits to identify research questions that will form the basis of a future grant application, we will conduct an environmental scan of nutrition and physical activity (PA) opportunities, infrastructure and policies in schools and complete a preliminary synthesis of relevant literature. The aim is to enhance our understanding of how schools and policymakers in Nigeria can best support metabolic health and prevent NCDs among adolescents by developing preventive strategies and policy interventions that reduce nutritional and metabolic health inequities.