Angela McFarlane
Vice President, Strategic Planning UK & North Europe, IQVIARead the foreword from Curia’s new report: Creating a Healthier Nation: Obesity and CVD Report Launch.
The report reflects discussions from the Obesity Summit held at the House of Lords in March, jointly hosted by Curia and IQVIA.
Thank you to all who participated in this impactful and timely Obesity Summit discussion. Particular thanks go to Baroness Mary Goudie, who kindly hosted the summit in the House of Lords. The session brought together senior clinical leaders, NHS England, Integrated Care Systems, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Office for Life Sciences, academia, digital health, people living with obesity, and the UK life sciences sector to collectively shape bold and actionable policy solutions to the UK’s obesity crisis.
Through candid and wide-ranging dialogue, participants generated ambitious yet pragmatic proposals that, if adopted, could achieve real and measurable impact within the next five years. These solutions could reverse the trajectory of obesity, moving from sickness to prevention, and analogue to digital, and crucially safeguarding the long-term sustainability of the UK health and social care system, whilst realising economic growth.
The discussion strongly reinforced the need for whole-system thinking and future-focused, ambitious policymaking. Speakers and participants emphasised that while obesity is an urgent public health issue, it must also be approached through the lens of chronic disease management, prevention-focused pathways, pharmacotherapies treatments, digital innovation, equitable access to medicines, and building essential NHS and economic resilience.
6 Key Recommendations From the Summit Included:
- Immediate recognition by the UK Government and Royal Colleges that obesity is a long term, chronic medical condition, not simply a lifestyle issue – with implications for training, funding, and national clinical guidance.
- Creation of a ringfenced Obesity and CVRM Sovereign Health Fund – modelled on the Cancer Drugs Fund and paid for by a hypothecated tax on fast and ultra high processed food companies and fast food delivery platforms – to ring-fence investment into novel pharmacotherapeutic treatments and unlock wider system savings. This approach would enable earlier access to emerging therapeutics, including the 157 new treatments currently in development – 82 of which are already in Phase 2/3 – and help bring down the cost of goods through volume-based adoption.
- A compelling economic case to HM Treasury to reframe investment in obesity treatment and pathway transformation not as a cost, but as a productivity imperative. The long-term economic and workforce gains from a healthier, more active population are considerable and urgent.
- A combined and integrated strategy for prevention and treatment to embed digital and behavioural interventions as core, evidence-based components alongside pharmacotherapeutic innovation and sustained public health measures. Robust digital behavioural support – when paired with medication – has been shown to significantly improve outcomes, as evidenced by organisations such as Second Nature and recent peer-reviewed studies.
- Targeted evidence-based interventions using local population health data and polygenic risk scores to identify cohorts in greatest need – ensuring precision access pathways that include innovative medicines and wrap-around digital and behavioural support.
- Alignment of national commissioning guidance with the pace of pharmacotherapeutic innovation – including a re-evaluation of the NHS England interim commissioning guidance, which, given the advent of new oral obesity medicines within a year, will be arguably out of date within a year.
Participants heard compelling insights from leaders in clinical practice, research, digital health, and
Integrated Care System (ICS) commissioning, who shared lived examples of innovation already
underway – from trauma-informed obesity programmes to digitally enabled integrated care pathways
and early adoption of novel therapies.
There was clear recognition that the current narrative must change. Failure to take radical decisions
means the UK is on course to have the highest obesity prevalence in Europe by 2035 – and the health
and economic costs are escalating. A shared sense of urgency underpinned the session.
The participants were united that the narrative must shift – from “we can’t afford to invest” to “we
cannot afford not to invest.
Thank you once again for the invaluable contributions of those who participated and for your commitment to meaningful change. IQVIA welcomes the outputs from the summit, produced by independent policy institute Curia, and looks forward to further engagement on the actions ahead.
The full report from Curia’s recent obesity lunch is now available here.
It is free to access for the public sector, registered charities and subscribers of Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group.
To find out more about Curia memberships, please contact Ben McDermott, ben.mcdermott@chamberuk.com.
