Teen mum off to Geneva to speak on ending obesity

Fri May 13 2016 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Teen mum off to Geneva to speak on ending obesity

13 May 2016

LENScience Director Jacquie Bay with Jasmine Crosby.

Don’t just tell us what we can and can’t eat: fix our obesogenic environment, and give us the facts so we can figure out solutions to the obesity epidemic that will work in our lives.

This is the message a teenage mum from Pokeno will deliver to an international audience at a World Health Organisation (WHO) event in Geneva later this month.

Jasmine Crosbie, 19, was invited to speak in Geneva after WHO Commissioners and staff saw her at a youth forum organised by the Liggins Institute, held at Tamaki College last July.

Crosbie, who works as a supermarket fresh food supervisor, has never been further than Australia before. She’s taking her partner, police constable Joshua Parsons, and leaving their three-year-old son, Luka, with her parents.

“It’s so important that young people are listened to and are included in this debate around ending childhood obesity,” she said. “The 'change' will be directed at us after all, as it is easier to implement good habits in younger people's lives rather than change the already set-in habits of adults.

“And everyone knows teenagers don't listen! So, strategies coming straight from us would be the most effective ones.”

She will have 10 minutes to address 200 people at the side event to the WHO annual meeting, known as the World Health Assembly (WHA). She’s the only young person of three speakers. The other two are politicians from Ghana and Mexico. New Zealander Sir Peter Gluckman, co-chair of the Ending Childhood Obesity Commission, will jointly chair the event.

In her speech, she’ll talk about what she learnt from a Liggins Institute school programme that her biology teacher Peter Weekes took her class to while she was a student at the Taonga Teen Parent Unit at James Cook High School in Clendon.

The Liggins LENScience school programme teaches cutting-edge health science about obesity by engaging students as problem-solvers.

“The issue of obesity affects all communities and is especially important in communities such as South Auckland where there are high levels of poverty,” Crosbie will say in her speech.

“What’s special about Taonga is that all the students are experiencing either pregnancy or parenthood. This made the evidence in the classes at Liggins very personal, but also empowering.”

She’ll recall how she and other young people at last year’s forum “scrambled for the microphone” when one commissioner suggested they were just saying what their teachers wanted them to say. “I managed to snatch a microphone and stated, ‘Well, actually sir, I have a toddler. So I care a lot!’”

Another student said, “We are concerned, of course we are. We don’t want to get type 2 diabetes; we don’t want to die at 50.”

She’ll describe the obesogenic environment surrounding her old school in Clendon: “multiple very low price bakeries, McDonald’s and a host of other takeaway bars offering pizza, Chinese food, roasts full of deep-fried foods, fish and chips, Polynesian takeaways, and a supermarket advertising two 1.5 L Coca Cola bottles for just $4. There’s only one fruit and vegetable store in the shopping centre, and not surprisingly its stock is of disgusting quality.

“Every Tuesday and Thursday the students are allowed to walk across and buy their lunch; can you guess what they come back with?”

The environment needs to change, she argues. “How can young people make healthy food decisions when they’re being suffocated by an excess of unhealthy options in their communities?”

But throwing in more healthy cafes and adding salads to the menu isn’t enough by itself. “The community will simply head elsewhere for the food they’re used to, the food they’ve been raised around.”

Education starting from primary school and integrated throughout the curriculum – “not just Health and Physical Education” – is also crucial.

“Young people, just like adults, don’t follow rules that they don’t understand,” she’ll say.

“We need to be given the chance to explore the issue and the evidence and make decisions based on evidence that work in our context.”

The event at which Crosbie will speak, “Ending Childhood Obesity: Securing the Future for our Children”, takes place on May 26, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Contact: Nicola Shepheard
Media Relations Adviser
Tel: 09 923 1515
Mob: 027 537 1319
Email: n.shepheard@auckland.ac.nz