Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A call to action on obesity in England
The Department of Health has today published Healthy Lives, Healthy People : A call to action on obesity in England. This sets out a new approach to tackling obesity in England with a need for concerted action across society to achieve a downward trend in excess weight by 2020. In addition to these new national ambitions the key areas covered in the Call to action include:
- The importance of action focusing on both children and adults, and on both prevention and treatment;
- How a wide range of partners can work together to ensure that people get the right support and information to help them reach and maintain a healthier weight;
- How under the new public health system Local Authorities will have a new enhanced role, supported by a ring-fenced budget, and will bring together local partners to provide effective responses for addressing this major issue;
- The Government’s commitment to support local areas by making sure they have access to the best possible data and evidence;
- A continuing key role for the centre to complement this, for example by leading the Responsibility Deal and national campaigns such as Change4Life; and
- A challenge to the food and drink industry to play a key role – alongside Government, NGOs and others – in reducing the population’s calorie intake by 5 billion calories a day.
The document can be found here:
http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2011/10/call-to-action
The response of the ASO can be found here
