MPs investigate how NHS should help people lose weight
The Health and Social Care Committee will examine how patients in England access weight loss medications, and how they sit alongside other weight-loss services offered by the NHS.
Meeting details
In the 2022 Health Survey of England, 28% of all adults were living with obesity and a further 36% were overweight, making a total of 64% who were living with excess weight, compared to 53% In 1993.
Among the witnesses in this session will be Professor Susan Jebb of the University of Oxford. She contributed to a study published in the in the British Medical Journal which found that those who lost weight using jabs typically regain the weight they lost within 1.7 years of stopping medication – a much shorter time than patients who received behaviour-based services.
MPs will be interested to hear about the cost-effectiveness of weight-loss jabs for the NHS, and about the efficacy and ease of access to weight-loss services, both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical.
How obesity and excess weight are framed by the health service will be discussed, such as whether they should be treated as a disease and whether it could be diagnosed more effectively than by relying on Body Mass Index.
There will also be questions about how weight-loss services and the commonality of weight-related conditions are adding workload pressures to GPs, and whether referral pathways to specialist services could be simplified.