The sixth ISBNPA conference is ongoing!

Yesterday the sixth annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA, see http://www.isbnpa.org/) has started in the Folket Huset conference center in Oslo, Norway. After professor Knut Inge Klepp as the chair of the local organising committee and myself as the incoming president of the society gave a brief word of welcome to all the delegates, Dr. Heath McDonald of Deakin University, Australia, gave a very interesting opening keynote on marketing to children. His key message was that a ban on advertising to children may not be a very effective way to help to prevention childhood obesity, since many other way of marketing are in place that are more effective and that will not suffer from advertising bans. After this keynote there was a very pleasant and lively opening reception.
This year’s ISBNPA meeting attracted a record-number of participants, over 500, compared to the 200-350 in earlier years. This is a great accomplishment. ISBNPA is growing into a serious society, also because the ISBNPA journal, the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (see http://www.ijbnpa.org/) is now officially tracked to establish an official impact factor (the preliminary IF is > 3.0!).
Today the conference is nicely on track with a great keynote by professor Leanne Birch from Pen State University, USA, on parental and early childhood influences on children’s eating behaviors followed by different parallel sessions on behavioural nutrition and physical activity issues.
Many thanks to the local organisers, chaired by professor Knut Inge Klepp and strongly coordinated by Dr. Nanna Lien, for making this possible.