Key Findings

Obesity is a complex, chronic, and relapsing condition that demands a new perspective. Intended for pathway system leaders across the NHS, the report emphasises the importance of reframing obesity as a disease influenced by biological, psychological, and environmental factors, rather than just an issue of personal responsibility. The Obesity Sprint, facilitated by Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group under the leadership of Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE, and supported by Head of Improving Population Health at West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, Emmerline Irving and Obesity Programme Manager, Lisa Buchanan, brought together a wide range of stakeholders to address the fragmented approach to obesity care across the UK.

A Fragmented System

Despite numerous initiatives, obesity policy in the UK has suffered from fragmentation.

The system is often disconnected – across national and local priorities, between prevention and treatment, and even across different sectors responsible for obesity management. This lack of integration results in an insufficient response to a growing issue. As outlined in the report, the issue is not a shortage of ideas or expertise, but rather the inability to act cohesively on what is already known about the condition.

“The challenge now is not to generate more discussion, but to translate what we already know into action,” says Irving. The report stresses the urgent need for national leadership and a consistent policy framework, particularly across Integrated Care Systems (ICSs).

Addressing the Root Causes: The Dual Approach

Participants in the Sprint identified two critical pathways in addressing obesity: prevention and treatment. Prevention focuses on the broader societal and environmental factors that contribute to obesity, such as food systems, urban planning, and public health policies. On the other hand, treatment requires a more personalised, structured approach for those already living with obesity, recognising the complexity of the condition and integrating long-term clinical care, psychological support, and behavioural interventions.

“Obesity should be recognised as a chronic, relapsing disease influenced by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and environmental factors.” Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE, Chair, Curia, Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group

The Stigma Barrier

Stigma surrounding obesity emerged as one of the most significant barriers to progress. Buchanan found when commissioning the More Than Weight 2025 report, that individuals reported avoiding social situations, workplaces, and even healthcare settings due to the stigma associated with their weight. “People with lived experience and the workforce are not getting the support needed. 74 per cent of participants living with obesity said they felt misunderstood by healthcare professionals, with only 35 per cent of those healthcare professionals reporting that they felt adequately trained to have sensitive conversations about weight.”  

Irving highlighted the importance of changing the narrative surrounding obesity: “Conversations about obesity do not only happen in clinical environments. They happen in schools, workplaces, and communities.” To break the cycle, stigma must be addressed at all levels – through cultural change, a unified public messaging framework, and embedding trauma-informed care within services.

Emerging Treatments: GLP-1 and Metabolic Medicines

The report also covers the potential impact of emerging metabolic treatments, particularly GLP-1 medicines. These therapies represent a significant shift in obesity care, offering patients a clinical tool to manage their condition. However, experts caution that these medicines should not be viewed as a standalone solution. They must be integrated into holistic care pathways that include psychological and behavioural support. The success of these treatments depends on their effective integration into the healthcare system.

“Metabolic medicines must be integrated within comprehensive care pathways that include behavioural support, psychological care, and long-term clinical management.”
Emmerline Irving, Head of Improving Population Health, West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership

System Reform: What Must Change

The Obesity Sprint report presents a comprehensive set of recommendations to address the obesity crisis. These recommendations centre on three main areas: national coordination, workforce capability, and the integration of metabolic medicines into holistic care pathways.

1. National Coordination: Establishing a unified national obesity strategy is crucial. This strategy would recognise obesity as a chronic, relapsing disease and align policies across health, planning, education, and economic sectors.
2. Workforce Development: Strengthening workforce education across sectors is necessary to ensure that healthcare professionals are equipped to address the complexity of obesity with compassion and expertise. This includes integrating trauma-informed care into professional training and ensuring that workforce capabilities are aligned with the latest scientific understanding of obesity.
3. Metabolic Medicines: As access to GLP-1 therapies and other metabolic treatments grows, it’s essential to ensure equitable access and incorporate these treatments into comprehensive care pathways that include multidisciplinary support and long-term follow-up.

The Path Forward

For the UK to move forward in addressing obesity, a comprehensive, system-wide approach is necessary – one that integrates prevention with treatment, removes stigma, and aligns public policy with clinical delivery. While regional efforts, such as those in West Yorkshire, are paving the way for a more integrated approach, the report makes it clear that the key to lasting change lies in coordinated national leadership and a commitment to system-wide reform.

Final Thought

To create a system that truly supports people living with obesity, we must move beyond fragmented policies and embrace a unified, compassionate, and evidence-based approach. The opportunity is significant – what remains is the willingness to act on the insights we already have.

This report will be disseminated to leads across the NHS as they develop their neighbourhood commissioning pathways.

To find out more about this report and the work of Curia, please contact Chair, Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE at Andrew.stephenson@curia.com.

Curia will be hosting their annual obesity summit in Parliament in June, to find out more and register, visit: www.chamberuk.com/events.

A new study outlined in the Nature journal has reignited debate around weight-loss medications – not by questioning whether they work, but by asking a more important question: who do they work for, and why?

The research, drawing on data from 15,000 patients, suggests that genetic variation can influence how effectively individuals respond to drugs such as Wegovy® and Mounjaro®. Some patients lost up to 30% of their body weight, while others saw minimal benefit. Certain genetic variants were also linked to more severe side effects.

At first glance, this appears to be a scientific insight into personalised medicine. But in reality, it points to something much bigger: the UK is entering a new phase in its approach to obesity – one that moves beyond access to treatment and towards understanding outcomes, variation, and system impact.

That shift will sit at the centre of the upcoming Curia Obesity Summit on 23 June 2026.

The end of the “access debate”

Over the past two years, the policy conversation has largely focused on expanding access to anti-obesity medications. The NHS has begun to roll out treatments in targeted cohorts, while private uptake has surged – with an estimated 1.6 million people in the UK trying weight-loss drugs in the past year alone.

But access alone is no longer the primary issue.

As the study highlights, outcomes vary widely. Genetics may play a role, but experts are clear that behavioural, clinical and system factors remain the dominant drivers of success. In other words, medication is only one part of a much more complex pathway.

This reflects a broader conclusion emerging from national policy discussions: the UK does not lack treatments – it lacks delivery models that ensure those treatments lead to sustained health outcomes.

From weight loss to whole-system outcomes

The Curia Obesity Summit builds directly on this insight.

While 2025 focused on access, pharmacological innovation and national strategy, the 2026 summit will focus on implementation: how to translate treatment into measurable, long-term outcomes across the health system and economy.

This means shifting the conversation in several critical ways:

• from short-term weight loss → long-term health, relapse prevention and “living well”.
• from medication in isolation → integrated treatment pathways combining behavioural, clinical and digital support.
• from national policy ambition → delivery at Integrated Care System (ICS) and neighbourhood level.
• from activity-based commissioning → outcomes, equity and economic value.

The implication is that success should no longer be measured in kilograms lost, but in reduced NHS demand, improved workforce participation, and sustained patient wellbeing.

Speaking to Politics UK, former Head of Population Health at West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and Co-Founder & Director at We Are ATR, Emmerline Irving said “If we want better outcomes, we need to view obesity through a different lens, starting with what has happened to someone, not simply what is wrong with them. GLP-1 medicines are one important tool, but their real value comes when they sit within a holistic, trauma-informed pathway that addresses root causes and connects people to the support that best meets their needs.”

Irving is working with the team at Curia and UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation on the production of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation’s Obesity Summit with Curia in Parliament in June.

The missing layer: why variation matters

The genetic findings reported this week are significant not because they offer a complete explanation, but because they reinforce the need for more sophisticated, personalised approaches to care.

If different patients respond differently to the same treatment, then a one-size-fits-all pathway is unlikely to deliver consistent results.

Commenting on the findings, former Deputy National Medical Director at NHS England, Professor Mike Bewick said, “The real promise of GLP-1 therapies lies not just in treatment, but in prevention, especially when combined with lifestyle change and informed by genetics to identify who will benefit most.”

Professor Bewick will be facilitating UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation’s Obesity Summit with Curia in Parliament in June.

The summit will explore how to address this through:

• targeted cohort selection – identifying which patients will benefit most
• integrated triage models – combining biological, psychological and social factors
• linked data and real-world evidence – moving beyond clinical trials to
• understand long-term outcomes

This is where the concept of precision medicine becomes operational rather than theoretical.

Beyond biology: trauma, stigma and system design

Crucially, the emerging evidence also highlights what the genetic data does not explain.

As clinicians have repeatedly emphasised, outcomes are shaped not just by biology, but by engagement, adherence and trust in the system. These are influenced by stigma, prior experiences of care, and the way services are designed.

The summit will therefore place a strong emphasis on trauma-informed pathways – recognising that:

• stigma and shame can reduce engagement with treatment.
• unsafe or dismissive clinical interactions can undermine outcomes.
• long-term adherence requires trust, continuity and support.

This represents a fundamental shift from a purely biomedical model to a whole-person, system-based approach.

Building the evidence the system actually needs

One of the most consistent challenges identified across policy and clinical discussions is the lack of robust, long-term data.

While clinical trials demonstrate average weight loss, they do not yet fully capture:

• long-term health outcomes and comorbidity reduction.
• relapse rates and maintenance of weight loss.
• impact on NHS utilisation.
• workforce and productivity gains.

The Curia summit will aim to build consensus around the need for a national outcomes framework and linked datasets that connect NHS, local government and private sector data.

Without this, policymakers and HM Treasury lack the evidence required to justify large-scale investment and system redesign.

Obesity as an economic strategy

Perhaps the most important shift is conceptual.

Obesity is no longer being framed solely as a health issue. It is increasingly recognised as a major driver of economic inactivity, workforce attrition and long-term public spending.

This reframing – from healthcare cost to economic opportunity – will be central to the summit’s discussions.

The question is no longer whether weight-loss treatments work, but whether the UK can design a system that:

• improves population health.
• reduces long-term demand on the NHS.
• supports people to remain in or return to work.
• delivers measurable fiscal value.

From insight to action

Reporting on the findings highlight a critical moment in the evolution of obesity treatment: we are beginning to understand variation in outcomes, but we have not yet built systems that respond to it.

The Curia Obesity Summit is designed to close that gap.

By bringing together policymakers, NHS leaders, clinicians and industry, the aim is to move from insight to implementation – developing practical models for integrated care, data-driven commissioning and long-term outcome measurement.

Because the next phase of obesity policy will not be defined by new drugs alone.

It will be defined by whether the system can turn those drugs into sustained, equitable and economically meaningful outcomes.

At a summit in Barnsley, NHS leaders, digital entrepreneurs, and AI specialists confronted an uncomfortable truth: the NHS doesn’t lack good ideas. It lacks the conditions to spread them.

The NHS has never suffered from a shortage of innovation. What it suffers from is a second-adopter problem — the systemic failure to take what works in one place and make it work everywhere else. That was the central challenge at Curia’s Accelerating NHS Innovation Summit, held at Barnsley Football Club in February 2026. 

Furthermore, understanding the impact of obesity on health outcomes remains a priority for the NHS.

The question was not what the health service should do. It was how it could actually move and move quickly.

Chaired by Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Chair and former Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE, the discussion was deliberately structured around learnings from past failures and opportunities for the future. What barriers keep reappearing? What unglamorous solutions actually work? And what could another Integrated Care System (ICS) lift and reuse tomorrow, without waiting for new legislation or fresh national funding?

When Stigma Became the System Barrier

Head of Population Health at West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, Emm Irving opened with a reframe that set the tone. The hardest barrier the ICS had faced in redesigning obesity pathways was not commissioning structures or data gaps. It was stigma.

“The biggest barrier is stigma,” Irving said. “Trying to understand that this is about people living with a long-term relapsing condition, that’s often looked at as your own fault.”

West Yorkshire spent eighteen months bringing clinicians, finance leads, public health teams, and policy colleagues to a shared understanding: obesity is a chronic relapsing condition shaped by systemic failure and lived trauma, not individual laziness. That reframing, she argued, is foundational. Without it, clinical innovation lands in a system still organised around blame.

The arrival of GLP-1 drugs then destabilised that consensus — pushing decision-making back into a purely budget-driven frame. Irving was direct: “So what are we going to do then? Just leave people to die?”

The West Yorkshire model now rests on five elements: biology, psychology, socioeconomics, treatment, and care — a framework she argued cannot be bypassed even by pharmaceutical breakthroughs.

Most of its foundations, she noted, cost very little to build.

When Commissioning Designs Out the Patient

Programme Director for the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Planned Care Alliance, Catherine Thompson argued that services fail when systems lose sight of why people work in healthcare in the first place. Planned care pathways for women’s health frequently lose out because demand is diffuse and cuts across multiple services, with commissioning structures inadvertently creating gaps that leave patients bouncing between providers.

Digital infrastructure is too fragmented for information to follow a person across their care journey. And professional resistance — consultants reluctant to cede clinical leadership even when evidence supports it — adds another layer of friction.

Her prescription was simple: start with what people actually need. “The point in why I go to work every day isn’t to manage NHS finances,” she said. “It was because I wanted to help people live better lives.”

Thompson also raised what she called the future Horizon scandal for the NHS. If a diagnostic algorithm fails, who is responsible — the clinician who applied it, the developer who built it, or the organisation that deployed it? That question, she argued, needs answering before AI adoption scales, not after harm occurs.

Digital Inclusion and The Three-Client Problem 

Co-Founder of Essential Parent, Diana Hill brought a digital provider’s perspective on embedding digital tools sustainably across health systems. Her organisation’s localised apps — covering midwifery, infant feeding, health visiting,and the full women’s health pathway — now operate across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside, Birmingham and inner-city London.

It took eight years, she said, to realise the product serves three distinct clients simultaneously: the women and parents using it, the health teams whose workflows it must support, and the commissioners whose targets it must meet. Getting that balance wrong means adoption stalls regardless of clinical value.

A recent National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) grant will deliver services across more than a hundred languages — an impetus that came from focus groups with Somali women in Liverpool. “There’s no word for menopause in quite a few languages,” Hill noted — a reminder that digital inclusion requires cultural literacy, not just technical translation.

From AI Pilots to System Capability 

Chief Executive of trade association for the AI economy in the UK, UKAI, Tim Flagg turned to the question haunting NHS innovation: why do successful pilots not spread?

His answer centred on three gaps. First, the people gap — AI tools that ignore patient centrality or embed bias fail to earn clinical trust. Second, the platform gap — without an interoperable data infrastructure, tools cannot connect across the pathway. Third, the productivity gap — until the first two are resolved, AI remains a collection of isolated tools rather than a shared system capability.

Flagg was candid: “We are really just at the beginning.” Failure is inevitable — the question is whether it happens in safe environments, through sandboxes and synthetic data, or in live clinical settings. 

The most successful implementations he had observed gave clinicians time back from administration and paperwork, rather than replacing them.

On Thompson’s accountability question, he acknowledged the industry has no settled answer — but asking it, he argued, is itself responsible practice. 

Precisely what the companies behind some recent AI controversies failed to do.

What Monday Morning Actually Looks Like

The panel’s closing consensus was practical. Workforce transformation must accompany service redesign, not by training more people into old roles, but by rethinking skill mix and professional boundaries. Digital tools need to be framed as supporting staff, not replacing them, or resistance will derail adoption before it begins.

Above all, trust between clinicians and patients, and between the public and AI, must be treated as a precondition for innovation, not an afterthought.

Stephenson closed by returning to the thread that ran through every contribution: people. How services are designed around them, how relationships are built and sustained, and how trust, once lost, takes far longer to rebuild than any technology takes to deploy.