Grant: Op Grant: Sugar and Health - Pop. Approaches to Reduce Free Sugar Consumption

High sugar intake is an established risk factor for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Nearly 30% of daily energy intake among young children in Canada is from total sugars and nearly 50% of total sugar intake is from sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) and milk. More than 30% of children in Canada are now overweight or obese. Population health interventions that prevent child obesity and improve health behaviours, including reduced sugar intake, are urgently needed to decrease the risk of adult-onset cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care recently developed and is implementing the Healthy Kids Community Challenge (HKCC) to promote children's health. HKCC is a population health intervention that will work with communities in Ontario to reduce childhood overweight and obesity through community-led planning and action. We propose to evaluate the HKCC in 4 communities using longitudinal data from the TARGet Kids! network. TARGet Kids! is a practice-based research network that has successfully obtained detailed health data on 8000 young children (<8 years of age). The overall aim of our study is to prospectively evaluate the impact of the HKCC on sugar intake and to evaluate how reductions in sugar intake impact the risk of child overweight, obesity and cardiometabolic factors. We will also estimate the potential impact of such a sugar reduction intervention Canada-wide on the burden of overweight and obesity. With substantial pre-intervention data already collected, we are in the unique position to evaluate the HKCC in young children using powerful longitudinal methods. Building upon the success of TARGet Kids! and in collaboration with Public Health Ontario we are the only proposed evaluation to evaluate changes in sugar intake. Our evaluation will inform the utility of the HKCC population health intervention for reducing sugar intake and improving the health of Canadian children.