“From Gasol Foundation we want to fight against childhood obesity starting from four key points: physical activity and sports, healthy nutrition, hours of rest and emotional wellbeing”. Cristina Ribes, the director of Gasol Foundation, has been in the Monastery of Los Jerónimos to sign an agreement of collaboration with José Luis Mendoza, the president of UCAM, to collaborate in a study that the Foundation of Pau and Marc Gasol will do in Spain during 2019. UCAM is a university of reference in research in health and sports, and therefore, Foundation Gasol has wanted to use the experience of the researchers for this investigation.

Ribes explained the motives of the implementation of this project: “There is a real need to get reliable and actual information on the situation of physical inactivity and obesity in Spanish children. The existing studies don’t take into account all of the ages and it hasn’t been done using scientific tools and instruments. What is new is that we will analyse children between 8 and 16 from all Spain and we’re going to compare data between autonomous communities”.

The brothers Gasol, two of the best basketball players in the history of our country, players in the NBA for years, have it clear that this is an important problem, and they are determined to fight against it: “At Foundation Gasol we’re centred on childhood obesity because there’s no information about the actual situation of Spain with similar data to the United States, but with the difference that here we’re not conscient about the extent of this problem. Pau and Marc Gasol want to contribute to the visibility of this problem and to find a way to turn the situation around. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the number of overweight or obese children will multiple with all the health problems it involves.

Pedro Emilio Alcaraz, director of the UCAM Research Center in High Performance Sports, explains the mission of the University in this study and the terms of work: “We’re going to lead with the data from the Region of Murcia, Albacete and Alicante. We will do an analysis on physical composition and collect data through questionnaires to find out which factors are associated to obesity. This month we will have a reunion in Barcelona and starting from there we will start to collect information until the end of may with the idea to present the research in september”.