Description of interventions and approaches | Source of evidence |
Prenatal: maternal micronutrient supplementation; prevents low birth weight, which is associated with subsequent NCD risk | Haider and Bhutta45 |
Infancy: breast feeding and appropriate complementary feeding, which reduce later overweight, type 2 diabetes and possibly high cholesterol and blood pressure | Victora et al 26 |
School-based: school policies and multicomponent interventions targeting behaviour risk factors at a young age, including school curricula on healthy eating, physical activity and body image, improvement in the nutritional quality of food supplied in schools, provision of free or subsidised fruit and vegetables, health promotion strategies and parent support | Waters et al
46 Knai et al 47 Baird et al 48 Rawal et al 49 Dudley et al 50 Liao et al 51 Seo and Sa52 |
Household: family interventions that support parents to model healthy behaviours to their children | Foxcroft and Tsertsvadze53 Saraf et al 54 |
Household: engagement of parents in supporting and encouraging their children’s physical activity; monitoring or regulating screen-time | Pereira and Palmeira55 Biddle et al 56 |
Across platforms: interventions combined in schools, homes, primary care clinics, childcare settings and within communities; these are more effective than stand-alone interventions | Wang et al
57 Oude Luttikhuis et al 58 Brand et al 59 |
Adolescence: use of information and communications technologies (computer and web-based interventions) to improve eating behaviours and/or diet-related physical outcomes | Chen and Wilkosz60 Hamel and Robbins61 |
Policy and community action: campaigns against tobacco consumption that are based on theory and formative research and delivered with a reasonable intensity over an extended period of time | Carson et al
62 Brinn et al 63 |
Across platforms: universal family-based and school-based substance abuse prevention, including tobacco use programmes | Foxcroft and Tsertsvadze53 Thomas et al 64 Thomas et al 65 Emmers et al 66 |
Policy and legislative action: government policies to control tobacco and alcohol through taxation, marketing and sales restrictions, bans in public places, and minimum age for purchase | WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control67 WHO Global Report68 |
Policy and legislative action: pricing policies, subsidies for healthy foods; taxation and control of marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, including food labelling, and social marketing campaigns | Hillier-Brown et al 69 |
*Based on two U UNICEF literature reviews undertaken in 2015–2016.