National Whole Systems Roadmap Event: Addressing Unhealthy Weight in England
PHIRST Connect, in collaboration with the Office of Health Inequalities and Disparities (OHID) regional weight management leads, Leeds Beckett University, Queen’s University Belfast, and PHIRST Fusion, led on a programme of work to support local governments in implementing whole-system approaches to obesity within their regions.
This work brought together current research and practice on whole-system approaches to obesity and unhealthy weight, with learning from over 100 local authorities, with the aim to move the field forward and establish a clear, shared direction for addressing obesity.
Obesity is a major public health challenge in the UK, affecting one in four adults in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and one in three adults in Scotland. Whole Systems Approaches (WSAs) aim to address obesity not by focusing on individuals and what they need to do, but by considering wider social, commercial, and environmental influences, such as the availability of affordable healthy food and access to green spaces.
WSAs bring together local stakeholders, community members, and policymakers to map all possible influences on obesity within a specific geographical area—the ‘system’—and then plan positive changes to the system to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone living there.
Building the roadmap
On 13 May 2026, PHIRST Connect and colleagues hosted the WSA Roadmap event. This event brought together local authority colleagues to openly discuss the barriers and facilitators to implementing Whole System Approaches to unhealthy weight within their regions. It also featured keynote speeches from the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy, Dr Dolly Van Tulleken, and Dr Justin Varney Bennet, regional director of Public Health for the South West of England.
On the day, six parallel sessions were held, all focusing on previously identified areas of interest that had emerged from PHIRST research, research by Leeds Beckett colleagues, and discussions with academic experts and OHID regional healthy weight leads. These included:
- Involving businesses and the food system in systems work
- Leadership and governance in WSA set-up
- Moving beyond maps
- Linking up national ‘plan’ with local action
- What counts as a systems approach and evaluating robustly
- Co-production and involving the public
It was a very successful day that allowed local authorities colleague the space to have open and honest discussions around the challenges and successes of implementing a Whole systems approach to unhealthy weight, with the opportunity for shared learning. With many delegates coming away from the day feeling invigorated to move forward with their practice in Whole systems approach to obesity.
‘Thanks so much for such an inspiring and motivational event, having worked on a whole systems approach for the last 4-5 years it’s great to join other likeminded colleagues working on the same agenda to share stories, exchange ideas and explore challenges with peers. Been waiting for a face-to-face event like this for years. More to come hopefully.’
Andy White, Public Health manager (CYP Healthy weight)
Roadmap event resources
Live illustrative scribing, delivered by Nifty Fox helped to capture the detailed discussions from the day. You can find their illustrations here: National Whole Systems Roadmap Event: Addressing Unhealthy Weight in England.
You can also find all slide decks from the day here:
Next steps
Using the insights and learning generated from the WSA Roadmap event, particularly during the parallel sessions, PHIRST Connect and colleagues plan to develop a WSA Roadmap document (final name TBC). This document will outline the key shared learning from the event and, where possible, identify ways to move forward within a Whole Systems Approach to addressing obesity. We will be in touch in due course with updates in relation to this.
To stay updated on future outputs and communications, please email us at: wsaroadmap@herts.ac.uk.