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"From the Gasol Foundation we want to combat childhood obesity from four key points: physical activity and sports, healthy eating, rest hours and emotional well-being."

Cristina Ribes, director of the Gasol Foundation, has been in the Monastery of Los Jerónimos to sign a collaboration agreement with José Luis Mendoza, president of the UCAM, to collaborate in a study that the foundation of Pau and Marc Gasol will carry out in Spain during 2019. The UCAM is a reference university in health and sports research and therefore the Gasol Foundation wanted to have the experience of its researchers for this study.

Ribes explained the motivations for the implementation of this project: "It arises from the real need to have reliable and current data on the situation of sedentary life and obesity of Spanish children." The studies that do exist do not cover all age groups and do not they have been made with scientifically validated tools or instruments The novel thing is that we are going to analyze children between eight and sixteen years of age from all over Spain and we will have comparative data between autonomous communities ".

The Gasol brothers, two of the best basketball players in the history of our country who for years have completed a successful career in the NBA, are clear that this problem is very important and therefore they are determined to fight it: "From the Gasol Foundation We are focused on childhood obesity because there is an absolute ignorance of the current situation in Spain with figures very similar to those of the United States but with the difference that we are not aware of the magnitude of this problem here. "Pau and Marc Gasol want to contribute to make this problem visible and to put measures in place to reverse this trend The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of children who are overweight or obese is multiplying with all the health problems they cause ".

Pedro Emilio Alcaraz, director of the High Performance Sports Research Center (CIARD) of the UCAM, explained the mission of the University in this study and the deadlines with which they will work: "We will lead the collection of data from the Region of Murcia, Albacete and Alicante, we will make some body composition analyzes and we will take data in some questionnaires to see the factors associated with obesity.This month we will have the first meeting in Barcelona and from there we will start taking data until the end of May with the idea of ​​presenting the study in September. "

Source: UCAM