SPOTLIGHT project

The SPOTLIGHT project is a research project led by VU University Medical Center Amsterdam and part-funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme concerning health. Initial European Union funding is for the period 2013–2016, covering part of the budget of €3.7m. The project is listed on the European Commission CORDIS site.

Purpose
SPOTLIGHT is an acronym for ‘Sustainable prevention of obesity through integrated strategies’ with the objective to systematically define the factors necessary for establishing effective health promotion approaches among adults, at different levels and in varying contexts - individual, family, organisational, and environments that can change behaviour, lifestyles, and life skills to sustainably reduce obesogenic behaviours. The core objective is to provide an evidence-based model for effective integrated intervention approaches in health promotion practice applicable across European regions.

Outputs
Project outputs will include (i) reviews and analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of ongoing community interventions to prevent obesity and promote health in European member states; (ii) an interactive, map-based database of at least 80 community interventions active during the period of the project; (iii) guidance to sponsors and funders of interventions on the elements that make for successful interventions; (iv) guidance and instruction manuals on using virtual analyses of environments (e.g. using Google Street View) for estimating the ‘obesogenic’ of the environment.

Consortium

 * VU University Medical Center (The Netherlands) Coordinating centre
 * rTechnical University of Lisbon (Portugal)
 * The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom)
 * The University of Bergen (Norway)
 * The University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
 * Ghent University (Belgium)
 * Maastricht University (The Netherlands)
 * University of Debrecen (Hungary)
 * The European Association for the Study of Obesity
 * The World Obesity Federation
 * Nutrition Epidemiology Unit, Université Paris (France)
 * Blox Group (The Netherlands)
 * English Metropolitan University College (Denmark)