N.S. government and drugmaker partner to fund $3M childhood obesity project

The Nova Scotia government and the maker of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are looking for ideas to help address childhood obesity and chronic illness in the province.

Novo Nordisk Canada and the province have each invested $1.5 million to the project. The drugmaker launched a similar program in Denmark, where it is headquartered, but Nova Scotia is the first jurisdiction outside Denmark to deliver the initiative.

"We know we can't treat our way out of chronic disease. It's a numbers game. There are too many people that require medication. You can see other headlines. We're challenged with supplying enough medication," Adam Marsella, the director of external Affairs at Novo Nordisk Canada told CBC's Information Morning Nova Scotia on Friday.

"We see challenges in primary care, not just in Canada, but around the world, challenges in health care service delivery. So how can we lessen the burden on folks who end up with more serious chronic disease down the road? And that was really the intent here."

The proposals must focus on at least one of our priority areas, including:

• Expanding access to healthy food.
• Promoting healthy eating.
• Designing communities that promote physical activity, free play and active transportation.
• Reducing screen time and sedentary behaviour.

The call for proposals ends on Oct. 18. After that, ideas will go through an evaluation or review process. Organizations whose proposals are accepted will then be invited to submit an application for funding.

When asked why a drug company that makes money treating obesity is interested in obesity prevention, Marsella said Novo Nordisk "lets us be very close to our purpose of driving change to defeat serious disease." 

"Now when I say defeat serious chronic diseases, that does mean treatment but it also means all the prevention and early detection work we do in  the public health space."

Nova Scotia Health and Wellness Minister Michelle Thompson said the government and Novo Nordisk Canada are focused on prevention measures.

"It's actually a foundation that owns a pharmaceutical company and one of their missions really is around the eradication of chronic disease," Thompson told Information Morning Nova Scotia.  "We recognized very early on that we had a lot of similar goals in terms of the prevention of disease and the promotion of wellness."

When asked if there were any reservations about partnering with a drugmaker, Thompson said the government believes there is "room for everyone in health care now to help with the complexity" in Nova Scotia.

"Through that conversation about how we provide not only medicines of course to Nova Scotians, we also had a common interest in how do we prevent disease, how do we prevent the reliance on the medications," Thompson said.

According to data from Nova Scotia's Department of Health and Wellness, about 37 per cent of children and youth in Nova Scotia are overweight or obese and 68 per cent of Nova Scotians over 12 have been diagnosed with a chronic condition.

Marsella said the Danish project, which has been going on for a few years, worked with a virtual reality gaming company and introduced physical activity in the math curriculum in elementary schools.

"That's not how I was taught math where you sit at a desk and work through a problem," Marsella said. 

"We don't know what we're going to replicate in Nova Scotia, like it's a call for challenges and we're going to see what we get from Nova Scotians in terms of their ideas."

When asked about the potential risks of body shaming or more negative focus on children's weight, Marsella said the intent is not to add any more weight stigma or bias. 

He said the Danish program that incorporated physical activity into the math curriculum was for all children, not just the ones with obesity.

"We have to be careful and thoughtful about these projects," Marsella said, adding there is an advisory committee tasked with keeping the project on the "right track."