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25 February 2025
The theme for World Obesity Day, Tuesday 4 March 2025, is 'changing systems for healthier lives'. The campaign will put a spotlight on the systems — not people — that need to change. King’s Health Partners (KHP) Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity is already making great progress in this area. Since marking the last World Obesity Day, the team been busy working in collaboration to improve health services for people living with obesity.
KHP Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity has been involved in many influential projects and events — working with external organisations, partners and patients to address stigma in obesity and improve care for patients and communities. In this blog the team shares three significant projects they have worked on to make a difference.
The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission on Clinical Obesity
After three years of collaboration we were excited to support the launch of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission on Clinical Obesity. The commission was chaired by Prof Francesco Rubino, Chair of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery in the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London, and Honorary Consultant at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. We collaborated with 58 leading experts, all included in the commission — which has been endorsed by 76 leading medical organisations around the world. The commission was launched to an audience of 1,560 people from 92 countries during a hybrid global launch event at the Royal College of Physicians, London.
The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission on Clinical Obesity was tasked with developing an objective definition of disease in obesity and reliable criteria for its diagnosis. Following publication, the ambition is to facilitate implementation of this definition, and evolutions in the research based on real-world application. Authors have also called for all people living with obesity to receive personalised health advice and evidence-based care when needed - free of stigma and blame - with different strategies for those with clinical obesity and pre-clinical obesity.
Creating opportunities for adults with learning differences
We joined the European project FEAST. King’s Health Partners, the Health Innovation Network (HIN), South London and the South East London Integrated Care System (SEL ICS) came together with OpenDot - a research and open innovation hub – to participate in a two-day hackathon event. The event sought to answer, “How can we support adults with learning differences living with excess weight, to make healthy food choices?”. The winning teams developed the below prototypes:
- Cooking Connections — a method-kit to co-design structured, inclusive and engaging food activities, fostering hands-on and impactful learning experiences for people with learning difficulties. The kit would guide organisations, community centres, healthcare specialists, therapists, caregivers and volunteers to design healthy cooking class programs specifically with - not just for - people with mild-moderate learning difficulties, built around their needs and preferences.
- NutriNest — a physical toolkit with inclusive kitchen basics: chopping boards and ingredient measuring tools with clear visual cues. The kit is designed for individuals with learning differences, yet it is suitable for everyone. It empowers users with accessible tools; it is intuitive and practical with a user-friendly design. It aims to foster independence and improve quality of life.
The Hackathons final event will take place in Copenhagen from 13 — 14 March 2025, showcasing projects and ideas from the Milan, London, Kaunas, and Berlin hackathons.
An equitable weight management model of care across SEL
The South East London (SEL) Integrated Care System and King's Health Partners developed a Healthy Weight action plan (as part of the Vital 5 system-wide efforts), with a goal of stemming the rise of obesity for children and adults by 2029/30.
Within this workstream, we launched an end-to-end adult’s weight management pathway review, focused on developing more equitable, efficient and sustainable weight management services - underpinned by the principles of value-based healthcare. Our team interviewed patients, participants, clinicians and commissioners across the system, we reviewed evidence-based practice, mapped provider pathways, and took a demand and capacity snapshot for SEL.
We are working to:
- Identify where the pathway/s are working well and areas for improvement.
- Co-design a new triage process with service users and providers to address challenges, deliver more equitable access, experience and outcomes for our diverse SEL communities, and enable effective translation of innovation and research into clinical practice.
- Make recommendations for commissioners and providers to support service development, sustainability, and to inform SEL Integrated Care Board strategic commissioning and planning.
- Develop and scale more tailored weight management services, to address health inequalities for communities at risk of excess weight and poorer health outcomes. One such services is Up Up! developed for Black African and Black Caribbean communities in Lewisham. Other programmes are being developed for Latin American communities in Lambeth and Southwark, and a programme for adults with learning disabilities across Bromley, Bexley and Greenwich which is due to launch later this year.
Feedback from the UP UP Evaluation Report:
“Overall, I would recommend it and endorse it. In fact, some of the women I was on the course with, we went back for our follow up, how you getting on kind of thing. They wanted to do it again!”
What's next for KHP Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity?
For 2025 we are excited to explore an exciting opportunity to partner with the Guy's Cancer Academy to deliver a training programme on cancer and obesity (a condition widely recognised as a key risk factor for many types of cancers). We will also be working with the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Obesity, to provide insights and case studies from weight management services across England.
KHP Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity is committed to finding ways of improving the health and wellbeing of people living with diabetes, obesity and endocrine related conditions across London, south east England, and beyond.
Over the past couple of years, in partnership with researchers from across KHP, we have been working to identify both our research strengthens and opportunities and define our research priorities across diabetes, endocrinology and obesity. Four overarching priority research focus areas have been identified, and within each of these we have highlighted three specific priorities (outlined below). These are areas where we aim to amplify and accelerate our research impact with tangible translation and global relevance.
Having reviewed and refreshed our KHP Diabetes, Endocrinology and Obesity research priorities, we have identified the following research focus areas within the area of disorders of insulin resistance:
- Gut Physiology and Metabolic Disease
- Cardiovascular Disease
- Metabolic Disorders of Pregnancy
We aim to amplify and accelerate our research impact within these areas with tangible translation and global relevance. This will build upon existing strengths in enhancing understanding of gut physiology and metabolic disease, gut-organ cross talk and evidence informed policy.
