The way we live now is making people sick. It is also making our planet ‘sick’. It is not sustainable.
Four preventable chronic diseases – heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease and cancer – account for 60% of the world’s deaths. Their underlying causes are tobacco use, physical inactivity and poor diet.
These preventable chronic diseases are at epidemic proportions. They are increasingly affecting people of working age and cause immeasurable disability, mental ill health and disadvantage to individuals and families, and insupportable costs to society in lost productivity and increased health services. They threaten economic stability in both developed and developing countries, and plunge families striving to escape the poverty trap back into disadvantage and despair.
Urgent action is needed. There is a clear way forward: prevention works. We have the evidence – we have the capacity – we have the tools – we know what to do. The four major chronic diseases can largely be prevented by tackling three risk factors: smoking, physical inactivity and poor diet. Many of the changes needed to prevent chronic diseases will also help to protect the physical environment.
To achieve real change, it is necessary to bring together government, civil society, business and industry, academia, planners, young people, funders, activists and environmentalists in a ‘coalition of the committed’ to work towards creating a world in which human and natural resources come first, and where social and physical environments are aligned with eradicating chronic diseases.