World Obesity Federation

The World Obesity Federation is an international nonprofit organization that leads global advocacy and coordination efforts against obesity, working in official relations with the World Health Organization. It organizes World Obesity Day, held annually on March 4 since 2015 (moved from an earlier October date in 2020), to raise awareness of obesity as a public health issue and press for systemic change in food environments, healthcare access, and governance rather than framing obesity purely as a matter of individual behavior. The federation has projected that by 2035 approximately four billion people worldwide could be living with overweight or obesity, a figure it uses to argue for coordinated policy responses rather than individual-level interventions alone. Its work spans research coordination, national association support, and participation in bodies such as the Lancet Commission on Obesity.