Dubai: The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and Unilever signed an agreement on Thursday marking the launch of a year-long healthy lifestyle campaign comprising several awareness initiatives and outreach programmes for residents, especially targeting students in the age group of 13-17 years across 30 schools in the emirate.

The campaign will raise awareness about healthy eating, hydration and daily physical exercise among adolescents in Dubai.

As part of this initiative, stationary bikes will be installed across all waiting areas of DHA health facilities. At a later stage, these bikes will be installed across the city’s public spaces, including parks, in collaboration with other governmental authorities, to encourage exercise.

Humaid Al Qutami, Chairman of the Board and Director General of DHA, said: “The partnership reinforces the DHA’s commitment to promote health awareness and prevent disease prevalence by reaching out to the community and educating them. The DHA has a number of school health programmes and we are glad to launch another health education programme that particularly targets adolescents in the emirate. We believe that forming good habits at a younger age is more effective than addressing these issues later on. We consider the private sector to be our partner and thus through such agreements, the aim is to reach out to different sections of society to educate them on how to lead a healthy lifestyle.”

As part of the agreement, Unilever will also support the DHA’s Anges Akhtar (Do More) campaign, which is a health awareness initiative that takes place annually across major parks and jogging tracks in the emirate. The aim of the Anges Akhtar campaign is to educate the public on the right foods to eat before and after exercise; the importance of hydration and how to avoid sports-related injuries. So far, the authority has distributed 30,000 health educational brochures as part of the campaign.

“Unilever is proud to promote well-being, health and quality of life. We’ve designed initiatives in association with the DHA to increase activity and encourage good eating and drinking habits,” said Waqas Javed, marketing director, Foods, Refreshments and Home Care — Unilever Gulf.

“Our aim is to raise awareness of the importance of staying active throughout the day. Regular exercise coupled with healthy eating is known to better health, reduce stress, rectify bad posture and stiffness, and also combat a host of lifestyle diseases which have become a global health challenge. Such initiatives help address this challenge by empowering people to make the right healthy choices,” he added.