A clinician's guide to obesity prevention in the UK

Abstract

Across the UK, people's lives are being cut short because of obesity, and the lives of the most deprived members of our communities are being cut the most. The role of the medical professional in managing overweight and obesity is extensive, but, for many patients, maintaining a healthy weight needs to be supported by creating environments that help people to stay healthy in the first place. The building blocks of health are the environmental, commercial, economic and social factors that largely determine our health and wellbeing and impact our capability, opportunity and motivation to maintain healthy-weight behaviours. Although the role of the healthcare professional generally is to focus on the individual patient, clinicians can still influence these building blocks. Clinicians have the skills to create change, they often hold power in organisations with local to international impact and there are actions, big or small, that every clinician can take to improve obesity prevention. Here, we outline an environmental-behavioural framework for the primary prevention of obesity and consider the role of clinicians in catalysing change.