The Obesity Health Alliance (OHA), a coalition of over 40 health charities, medical royal colleges and campaign groups, is launching a new project to develop a long-term strategy to reduce obesity across the life course.
With nearly two thirds of adults currently living with overweight or obesity and with child obesity levels at an all-time high, the problem is set to escalate, negatively impacting people’s health. This situation can change with bold and decisive policies to tackle the wider environmental factors that encourage over-consumption and inactivity. Just a one per cent shift in the number of people putting on extra weight each year until 2035, could avoid around 77,000 cases of disease including 45,000 cases of Type 2 diabetes in the year 2035 alone.
Chaired by Anne Johnson, Professor of Epidemiology at University College London, the project will bring together health non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with the research community to identify, to agree and prioritise a set of evidence-based recommendations that will reduce obesity prevalence across the whole population, published by the OHA as an independent strategy in 2021.
The strategy will provide a clear blueprint for action to address the factors that lead to obesity by setting the agenda for research priorities and providing a framework for the public health community to work collectively to influence Government policy development in the future.
The project is being funded by OHA members British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK along with the Health Foundation and Wellcome Trust. Academic researcher time is being funded as part of the UKPRP funded SPECTRUM project led by Professor Linda Bauld at the University of Edinburgh.
For more information contact: info@obesityhealthalliance.org.uk