Philip T. James

Chairman, The International Obesity TaskForce / Global Prevention Alliance

Session

He participated in the "Feeding the City" session.

Biography

Philip James trained in science and medicine in London, UK and had post-graduate training in the UK, Jamaica (with the British MRC) and the US. He developed with two other groups the criteria for using glucose/saline for dealing with acute diarrhoeal disease in children, devised the UN criteria for childhood and adult malnutrition and developed the lithium technique for assessing salt sources for preventive policy making. He also created the current methods for assessing individual and global food needs, the UN criteria for specifying the extra physical activity needs for preventing excess weight gain and introduced the energy deficit approach to obesity management. He wrote the 1976 UK government and the 1983 Royal College of Physicians (London) reports on obesity, chaired and developed the UK's Coronary Prevention Group's introduction of traffic light labelling of food in 1986, the first WHO/FAO report on dietary prevention of chronic diseases in 1990, the UK Department of Health's first preventive strategy for obesity and the first (Scottish - SIGN) Guidelines on the management of obesity.  He was chief nutrition advisor for FAO in the 1980s and helped devise the European and global WHO approaches to obesity and practical measures for chronic disease prevention. He proposed the implemented structure of the UK Food Standards Agency for Tony Blair, the reorganisation of the EU Commission's reorganisation to improve EU health policy making and devised the EU, now global, approach to managing food safety in relation to BSE. He chaired and wrote the UN's Millennium Report on global nutrition and health challenges and developed the World Cancer Research Fund's policies on future food strategies in poorer countries undergoing urbanisation. He established and Chairs the International Obesity TaskForce and now also chairs a childhood obesity initiative for the five international medical societies dealing with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, nutrition and paediatrics operating as NGOs and formally linked to WHO.