World Obesity Day Declaration

You may have already heard about the World Obesity Day Declaration following on from the WOD webinar, and we are pleased to show you this, in confidence. We would kindly like to ask, please do not circulate this at this stage.

The World Obesity Day Declaration [confidential]

• Recognise officially that obesity is a chronic, multifactorial disease as well as a driver of other diseases, with serious implications for individuals, families, societies and economies. 
• Obesity monitoring and surveillance, and innovative research into the causes and effective strategies for preventing and treating obesity, must be vigorously promoted and supported.
• Obesity prevention strategies must be developed, tested and implemented across the life course, from pre-conception, through childhood, and into older age.
• Treatment of obesity, using evidence-based, dignified, non-stigmatising and person-centred approaches – including behavioural, pharmacological, digital, nutritional, physical-activity-based and surgical interventions – should be accessible to all people with obesity
• Systems-based approaches should be applied to the management of obesity, aimed at strengthening health systems, enabling obesity’s incorporation into primary and secondary care, and addressing the environmental, social and commercial roots of obesity.

And we would like your help!

To sit behind this Declaration, we are hoping to publish a ‘menu of options’ that could be advocated for to policymakers around the world. We are looking for policy areas for which you would advocate in your country/region. Not all will be applicable in all circumstances – hence our description as being a ‘menu’.

Please could you send your suggestions to our colleague Katy Cooper (email@katycooper.co.uk) by Wednesday 26 February – we will then look through them and ensure that all the areas that you suggest are covered in the list that is published for 4 March.  

For inspiration, below are some possible examples, linked to the Declaration itself (‘R’ and ‘S’ of ROOTS) – but we are looking for many more of your context-specific suggestions, across all five areas of the Declaration above.

Recognise officially that obesity is a chronic, multifactorial disease as well as a driver of other diseases, with serious implications for individuals, families, societies and economies. 

Examples of options:

• Include obesity prevention, treatment and management within universal health coverage.
• Work with civil society to build a community of empowered patient advocates.

Systems-based approaches should be applied to the management of obesity, aimed at strengthening health systems, enabling obesity’s incorporation into primary and secondary care, and addressing the environmental, social and commercial roots of obesity. 

Examples of options:

• Develop or adapt evidence-based and patient-centred clinical practice guidelines to support the management of obesity in primary care.
• Increase awareness of industry interference and conflict of interest as major barriers to public health policy and research.