The SPOTLIGHT project is a research project led by VU University Medical Center Amsterdam and part-funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme concerning health. Initial European Union funding is for the period 2013–2016, covering part of the budget of €3.7m. The project is listed on the European Commission CORDIS site.
SPOTLIGHT is an acronym for ‘Sustainable prevention of obesity through integrated strategies’ with the objective to systematically define the factors necessary for establishing effective health promotion approaches among adults, at different levels and in varying contexts - individual, family, organisational, and environments that can change behaviour, lifestyles, and life skills to sustainably reduce obesogenic behaviours. The core objective is to provide an evidence-based model for effective integrated intervention approaches in health promotion practice applicable across European regions.
Project outputs will include (i) reviews[1] and analyses[2] of the strengths and weaknesses of ongoing community interventions to prevent obesity and promote health in European member states; (ii) an interactive, map-based database[3] of at least 80 community interventions active during the period of the project; (iii) guidance[4] to sponsors and funders of interventions on the elements that make for successful interventions; (iv) guidance and instruction manuals[5] on using virtual analyses of environments (e.g. using Google Street View) for estimating the ‘obesogenic’ of the environment.