Resolution on the National Programme on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health 2015–2025

Objectives

Slovenia’s National Programme on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health 2015–2025 seeks to improve health, quality of life, healthy ageing and health-system sustainability by enabling healthy eating and regular physical activity throughout the life course.[1][2][3]It applies a Health in All Policies framework to reduce obesity, chronic non-communicable diseases and health inequalities, while ensuring that healthy choices are accessible regardless of socioeconomic status, age, sex, disability, geography or cultural background.[4][5][6]

• Reduce overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, undernutrition, frailty and functional limitations, particularly among children, adolescents, older people, patients and socially disadvantaged groups.[7][8][3]
• Improve nutritional balance by reducing excess salt, sugar, saturated and trans fats, and by increasing consumption of fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, fish and healthier food products.[9][3][10][11][12]
• Promote breastfeeding, appropriate complementary feeding, regular breakfast consumption and healthy eating habits from pre-conception and infancy onwards.[3][13][14][15]
• Increase everyday physical activity, reduce sedentary behaviour and support age-appropriate movement, physical fitness, active transport, recreation and sport.[16][17][18][19]
• Improve access to safe, high-quality, locally produced and sustainable food, including through public catering, short supply chains, organic production and food-safety systems.[20][21][22]
• Protect children from marketing of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and sugary drinks, improve food information and labelling, and support informed consumer choices.[23][24][25]
• Achieve quantified population objectives, including reductions in childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity by 10%, adult overweight and obesity by 5%, physical inactivity by 10%, frequent confectionery and sweet-drink consumption by 15%, and salt intake by 15%.[3][26]
• Increase exclusive breastfeeding at six months to 20%, breastfeeding with appropriate complementary food at 12 months to 40%, daily breakfast and vegetable consumption by 10%, and daily fruit consumption by 5%.[3][26]

Implementation

The programme uses a whole-government, cross-sectoral and life-course delivery model.[2][27]It combines population-wide measures with targeted support and social protection for vulnerable groups, operating in homes, educational institutions, workplaces, healthcare, social care, local communities, food systems, hospitality, tourism, transport and urban environments.[5][28][29][30]Periodic Government implementation plans are intended to specify activities, responsible bodies, financial resources and short- and long-term outcome indicators.[31]

• Coordinate policy and delivery across health, education, agriculture, food, finance, public administration, labour and social affairs, economic development, transport, spatial planning, sport, tourism and environmental sectors.[32][33][34][19]
• Engage local communities, non-governmental organisations, social partners, consumer bodies, food producers and processors, retailers, caterers, hospitality providers, sports organisations, schools and health professionals in planning, implementation and monitoring.[5][35][30]
• Improve organised food provision in kindergartens, schools, student catering, workplaces, hospitals and residential care through healthy-eating guidance, staff training, menu monitoring, local procurement and healthier vending and catering offers.[28][36][37][38]
• Support healthy food access through subsidised food systems, school fruit and milk schemes, community and urban gardens, cooperatives, social enterprise, improved food literacy and short local supply chains.[33][34][20]
• Reformulate processed foods with industry by reducing sugar, salt, saturated fats and trans fats, while maintaining iodine sufficiency and improving portion and packaging sizes.[39][40][41]
• Provide physical-activity opportunities through quality physical education, school and community programmes, workplace health promotion, professionally led recreation, active travel, accessible green space, walking and cycling routes, and programmes adapted for older people and people with functional limitations.[42][43][44][45][46]
• Strengthen primary healthcare and prevention through the National Institute of Public Health, preventive examinations, health-education centres, reference clinics, community nursing, screening, counselling, referral and interdisciplinary teams involving clinicians, nurses, dietitians, physiotherapists, kinesiologists and sports educators.[47][48][49][50]
• Support maternal, infant and child health through nutrition counselling in pregnancy, breastfeeding-friendly settings, breastfeeding monitoring, early identification of unhealthy diet, inactivity, overweight, obesity and eating disorders, and referral to individualised support.[51][15][52]
• Build professional capacity and evidence through curriculum development, continuing education, periodic population surveys, research, updated dietary and activity guidance, and expanded monitoring of children’s physical and motor development.[53][54][55]
• Monitor progress using body-mass measures, physical-activity participation, breastfeeding, breakfast, fruit and vegetable consumption, confectionery and sweet-drink consumption, and sodium excretion in 24-hour urine.[3][26]Detailed reporting timetables and a comprehensive named accountability body are not specified in the supplied summaries.[31]

Monitoring & Evaluation

The programme establishes a broad monitoring and evaluation direction spanning population health, dietary behaviours, physical activity, food provision, food safety, preventive healthcare, research and implementation processes. Its most developed arrangements combine national surveillance and institutional monitoring with indicators for obesity, activity, breastfeeding, diet, school food provision, food safety, functional ability and chronic-disease prevention.[3][26][21][22][47][31]

• Assess body mass and obesity using body-mass-index categories for children under five, children aged six to nine, adolescents aged 11, 13 and 15, and adult women and men.[3]
• Monitor physical inactivity through the proportion of residents not achieving the World Health Organization recommended amount of total physical activity, with findings considered by gender and relevant social inequalities.[3][26][56][6]
• Track breastfeeding through exclusive breastfeeding at six months and breastfeeding at 12 months alongside appropriate complementary feeding, and establish continued monitoring because breastfeeding rates decline after discharge from maternity facilities.[26][57][15]
• Measure dietary behaviours through daily breakfast, fruit and vegetable consumption, frequent consumption of confectionery and sweet drinks, and 24-hour urinary sodium excretion as an estimate of average salt intake.[26]
• Monitor salt and iodine intake, including the appropriateness of salt iodisation, and track population intake of sugar, total fat and the balance of plant and animal fats.[39][58]
• Require regular monitoring and reporting of compliance with healthy-eating guidelines in educational institutions, supported by professional assessment of school menus and health-related advice.[28][33]
• Maintain food-borne outbreak surveillance, upgrade food-safety monitoring programmes, coordinate planning and reporting, establish a national database for risk-assessment data, and communicate official-control results to professionals and the public.[59][22]
• Use the National Institute of Public Health to monitor nutrition and physical-activity trends linked to chronic diseases, coordinate and evaluate preventive activities, and support providers and other stakeholders.[47]
• Apply national education and quality standards to improve consistent delivery of preventive services and assess programme success and cost-effectiveness.[49]
• Conduct regular monitoring of nutritional status and functional ability among patients and older residents, with procedures to manage and evaluate nutritional therapy and related supportive interventions.[60][61][62]
• Undertake periodic qualitative and quantitative population studies on diet, activity, fitness, dietary intake, energy expenditure, and food safety and quality, with internationally comparable data that are regularly reported and exchanged.[54][55]

Implementation plans adopted by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia are intended to specify activities, responsible bodies, required financial resources, and short- and long-term outcome indicators for process monitoring.[31]Working groups for priority areas are to operate under an overarching intersectoral group coordinated by the ministry responsible for health with other competent ministries.[31]The source also identifies lead ministries for several actions and assigns a central public-health role to the National Institute of Public Health, but it does not provide a complete indicator dictionary, common reporting timetable, evaluation schedule, or formal sanctions framework for the programme as a whole.[38][42][47][31]

Costing & Financing

The programme presents prevention, healthier nutrition and physical activity as investments that can reduce chronic-disease burden, healthcare expenditure and productivity losses, but it provides no consolidated programme budget or costed implementation plan.[63][31]Financing is expected to be addressed through periodic Government implementation plans that identify required financial resources, alongside coordination of Slovenian and European Union financial instruments.[32][31]

• Recognise obesity-related disease as accounting for approximately 7% of healthcare expenditure in European Union Member States, estimated at about 100 billion euros excluding indirect costs such as productivity losses and premature mortality.[63]
• Record annual direct healthcare costs of diabetes in Slovenia as at least 114.3 million euros, with diabetes affecting about 7% of the population and projected to increase by approximately 3% annually without effective action.[63]
• Note that public institutions, including schools, kindergartens, hospitals and residential homes for older people, spend more than 220 million euros annually on food; policy seeks to redirect a greater share towards quality domestic food.[33]
• Prioritise effective and widely accessible cross-sector interventions where resources are limited, consistent with financial sustainability and sustainable-development objectives.[5][64]
• Increase financing for basic and applied research and provide systematic financing for analyses based on Sports Educational Chart data, although no amounts are specified.[54][55]
• Increase Ministry of Health funding, capacity and resources after the evaluation of the 2005–2010 programme found insufficient financial resources among most stakeholders, particularly within the Ministry of Health budget.[31]
• Recognise that nutritional support and physical activity may shorten recovery, improve treatment efficiency and reduce treatment costs, while the source supplies no quantified savings.[29][65][60][61]

Specific funding is identified only for the Together for Health project, financed through the Norwegian Financial Mechanism, and for annual education-ministry allocations to higher-education institutions for student interest activities, which may include sport, although neither amount is given.[66][52]Across most programme areas, including healthcare prevention, food safety, local supply, active transport and physical-activity infrastructure, the source does not specify allocations, funding gaps, unit costs, financing mechanisms or economic assumptions.[21][22][45][46][29][62]