The European Commission has kicked off the HealthyLifestyle4All campaign aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle for all, across generations and social groups, with the main objective to improve the health and well-being of Europeans. The two-year campaign links sport and active lifestyles to health, nutrition and other policies, and involves civil society, non-governmental organizations, national, local and regional authorities and international bodies. All parties will implement various actions that encourage Europeans to be more active and more concerned about their health.
The actions will support the three objectives of the HealthyLifestyle4All campaign:
- Raise more awareness for healthy lifestyles across all generations;
- Support an easier access to sport, physical activity and healthy diets, with a special focus on inclusion and non-discrimination to reach and involve disadvantaged groups;
- Promote a global approach across policies and sectors, linking food, health, well-being and sport.
The European Commission will implement several actions in the next two years, including for example:
- Increase funding for projects supporting a healthy lifestyle in the Erasmus+, Horizon Europe and EU4Health Programmes for 2021-2027. €470 million will be available for sport actions under Erasmus+, €290 million under Horizon Europe, and €4.4 million under EU4Health
- Create a new #BeActive Across Generations Award to recognise the importance of Sport across different ages
- Launch an EU Mobile App for cancer prevention to raise awareness on the importance of healthy lifestyles for cancer prevention, supporting the goals of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan;
- Develop and update a food ingredients database containing information on the nutritional quality of processed food products sold in the EU, in order to promote healthier food products and reduce the consumption of less healthy food products, high in sugar, fat and salted. A harmonised mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling will further support that objective as well as the EU Code of Conduct on responsible food business and marketing practices that entered in force in July 2021;
- Address the issue of healthy and sustainable diets, and the importance of physical activity and mental health in schools. The Commission will review the EU School fruit, vegetables and milk scheme and will streamline the concept of healthy lifestyles in its recommendation on education;
- Support evidence-based policy making for healthy lifestyles with the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Knowledge Gateway and the Knowledge Centre on Cancer.