Weight Management

Posted on June 6th, 2022

Crich Medical Practices Weight Management Enhanced Service

In 2018/19 the majority of adults in England (63%) were living with an excess weight with 26% of men and 29% of women living with obesity or severe obesity (NHS Digital, 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of weight management. Living with excess weight puts people at greater risk of serious illness or death, with the risk growing substantially as body mass index (BMI) increases.

As noted in the 2020 government policy document Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives,  GP practices are often the first port of call when patients need health advice and support (GOV.UK, 2020).

The government has stressed the need to increase the frequency of interventions for obesity in general practice care with a focus on improving referral pathways into weight management services in every local health care system. The continuing aim for 2022 is to ensure that everyone living with obesity and who wants support for weight loss is offered this.

The aims of this Enhanced Service: to support practices to develop and implement a proactive approach to the identification of patients living with obesity; to work with wider system partners on developing pathways which incorporate multi-modal access options including online, telephone and face to face and to empower patients to actively provide and update their practice with this information online.

For the purpose of this enhanced service, obesity is defined as a BMI ≥ 30 or ≥ 27.5 for those of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups; and to support practices to engage with individual patients living with obesity and, following a conversation with the patient, to refer patients who are ready to make behavioural changes to appropriate weight management programmes.