Tackling child obesity will take a village

The recently published childhood obesity plan set out bold commitments for the government to support healthier environments for children and their families. Which, if delivered, have the potential to ensure that every child living in the UK will be set up to enjoy the healthy future they deserve.

Legislation that places restrictions on the marketing and retailing of unhealthy foods and drinks is significant and something health campaigners have been calling for several years.

Crucially, though, the plan calls on sectors wider than health to play their part in tackling this issue, including businesses, local authorities and schools.

As a physician, I try to help patients deal with the health consequences of excess weight. I see how obesity and the circumstances that lead to excess weight gain affect every aspect of people’s lives. I believe to successfully tackle the issue of childhood obesity, we must think about all these factors when developing solutions.

Earlier this month, the Health Foundation published responses from experts working in different fields ranging from food policy to law, engineering to mental health, history to sociology to the question ‘how can we reduce child obesity?’ The results were fascinating.

Dr Marisa de Andrade, a lecturer in Health, Science and Society at the University of Edinburgh, approaches tackling obesity by considering at how it affects people and communities rather than as abstract analyses. Looked at this way, people’s views become essential evidence, providing vital context to hard data.

Professor of Food Policy at City University, Corinna Hawkes, considers obesity alongside other inter-connected food systems problems such as malnutrition, environmental damage and climate change. She uses system reasoning to show that the current crisis is not a matter of individuals eating too much, but a system which encourages overconsumption. Hawkes also points to the importance of understanding how people interact with services so that policies are designed in ways that take account of the things that make us behave in ways that may not seem rational. For example, fear of stigmatisation may mean people do not respond to welfare policies.

Nigel Jones, Chair of the City Mental Health Alliance, makes a case for acting on conviction in testing out new ideas and then monitoring feedback. This approach is informed by his experience in getting city business leaders to engage in mental health initiatives. Jones says that many mainstream policies were once a good idea which lacked a robust evidence base. In recent years, taxes of sugary drinks in countries around the world (and now the UK) began as experiments that required a leap of faith from policymakers.

The government’s childhood obesity plan draws on a range of evidence including behavioural economics, qualitative opinion surveys, controlled trials and commercial data analytics to understand aspects of human behaviour, commercial practices and public opinion, all of which are crucial in tackling this far-ranging issue in the long term.

Obesity is a social, cultural, economic and political challenge. The consequences affect all of us, whether personally or through the people close to us or in our communities. There is a lot to learn from different approaches to address the far-ranging and multiple causes of obesity. The government is right in setting out its bold ambition to halve childhood obesity rates by 2030 but the reality is that achieving it will require concerted efforts at both national and local level from all corners of society.

John Wass is professor of endocrinology at Oxford University, special advisor on obesity to Royal College of Physicians and member of the Obesity Health Alliance steering group