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Barbadian businesses must play a greater role in protecting young people from unhealthy choices within schools, says President of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), Paul Inniss.

Speaking during a Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) webinar themed Back to School, Back to Health: Nothing at School Should Encourage Unhealthy Choices, Inniss said closer collaboration between the private sector, the Ministry of Health, and other stakeholders is needed to create effective solutions.

“I’m actually working through trying to coordinate between business, the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders… how can we pool resources and become more effective in [managing] the concerns around companies that actually pitch to our kids unhealthy foods and so forth. It is a balancing act… quite frankly, in talking to a lot of them, they actually want to be part of the solution as well. I don’t think we have figured it out,” he admitted.

Inniss noted that while companies like Sagicor have long supported schools by donating equipment or funding, there is room for businesses to go further.

“For companies like Sagicor, we started adopting schools. But no school has ever said to us, ‘Why can’t we devise a health programme?’ Maybe that is where we partner with the Heart and Stroke Foundation, HCC and others to actually be part of what is happening within the schools,” he said.

He also cautioned against fragmented approaches, stating, “Too many agencies are coming into business houses, independently, and everybody’s trying to achieve the same result, and there’s limited resources, limited capacity. You have to find a way to harness the resources and actually focus them where they are needed.”

The call comes against the backdrop of growing concern about how marketing and food environments exploit the vulnerabilities of young people.

Caribbean Vice-President of the International Association for Adolescent Health (IAAH), Dr Asha Pemberton, stressed that children and adolescents are neurologically wired to gravitate towards products that make them feel good.

“The frontal lobe… is simply not complete in maturation until age 25. So young people do things that feel good over and over… and that is exploited by all the industries. The food industry knows this because ultra-processed products taste good, they’re crunchy, they’re sweet, they’re salty [and] their dopamine drive happens. They are uniquely targeted,” she explained.

Dr Pemberton argued that it is unfair to place the responsibility solely on young people. 

“The simplistic ‘just make better choices’ only goes so far. We have to recognise that these are children and adolescents. Unless our environment, through a comprehensive ban, removes these items from their most intimate environment—and their school is one—it really becomes difficult to ask a developing brain to make these choices one by one,” he said.

Dr Pemberton said it is ultimately the responsibility of adults, caregivers, policymakers and businesses to create supportive spaces: “We cannot ask them to make decisions that they don’t have the capacity to do. We have to create an environment that is best supportive of their health and development.” (SB)

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