Promoting healthy lifestyles is one of the most important elements of enhancing the quality of life for the people of the country. The National Policy for Promoting Healthy Lifestyles in the UAE (Arabic file, PDF, 500 KB), issued by the UAE Cabinet, is in line with its vision to have a society that adopts sustainable healthy lifestyles.
The policy focuses on promoting healthy food, physical activity and tobacco control through:
- building and supporting social, financial and administrative commitment
- strengthening coordination at all levels - effective national partnerships and international cooperation
- developing legislations that support healthy lifestyles
- strengthening the institutional capabilities of the health authorities to be able to mobilise resources
- reducing the consumption of unhealthy food
- combatting physical inactivity
- tobacco control with a view to preventing the initiation of tobacco consumption in order to reduce the burden of disease and the death rate resulting from complications related to the use of tobacco products
- ensuring the continuity of health services supporting the sustainability of healthy lifestyles during emergencies, disasters and pandemics
- enabling community members to make decisions based on information about their personal health through appropriate and continuous health education
- involving communities in planning, designing and evaluating effective ways to promote healthy lifestyles
- strengthening the monitoring system for risk factors for diseases associated with an unhealthy lifestyle
- providing and creating a database and accurate statistics of risk factors and their determinants
- promoting and developing high quality research procedures in the field of prevention and response to lifestyle disease risk factors
- developing supportive interventions and initiatives to promote healthy lifestyles through external and internal health-promoting environments.
