In November 2024, Nesta published our blueprint to halve obesity in the UK - a toolkit designed for policymakers to support effective decision-making around obesity prevention and treatment. By presenting three metrics - the impact on population obesity, cost to governments, and quality of the evidence base - the toolkit facilitates the comparison of evidence-based health policies and supports policymakers to understand which policies are ambitious and impactful enough to effectively reduce population obesity levels, thus supporting the public’s health.

Similarly, the toolkit highlights which policies are well-intentioned but ultimately insufficient to improve the nations’ health. Policies can be viewed individually or grouped into packages, so policymakers can identify which routes will reduce obesity most effectively while balancing this with government budgets.

We want to ensure this resource is continually updated to reflect the latest quality evidence, helping the toolkit to remain a valuable resource for policymakers.

To this end, we have made four recent changes to the toolkit - updating one existing policy and adding three new policies. These policies were chosen due to updated evidence, to reflect the direction of treatment for obesity in the UK and due to political interest. More information on these changes can be found below:

1. We have updated the policy on enforcing front-of-pack labelling to broaden it to any type of graphic scheme summarising nutrition information more generally (instead of NutriScore specifically), and to reflect the additional impact of applying this labelling only on packaged products that do not currently carry voluntary front-of-pack labelling in the UK. This change was prompted by stronger evidence on the effect of real-world labelling interventions being released.
   
   
2. We have added a policy on the rollout of tirzepatide (Mounjaro) to the toolkit to model the impact of NHS England’s proposed 12-year rollout of this weight-loss medication, which targets those with a BMI over 40 and co-morbidities. We have modelled this policy’s impact on both class 3 obesity, and wider obesity levels. To note, our model covers the first five years of the plan, to be comparable to other blueprint policies. 
   
   
3. We have added a policy on applying a minimum unit price (MUP) to alcohol in England to the toolkit. MUP was implemented in Scotland in 2018 and Wales in 2020, so this policy models the impact on obesity if England were to introduce this policy as well. Although we find this policy leads to little impact on population obesity, it would have wider population health benefits such as on cancers, liver disease and mental wellbeing, alongside societal benefits like crime reduction.
   
   
4. We have added a policy on increasing referrals to the NHS Digital Weight Management Programme, as announced in the 10 Year Health Plan for England. Total diet replacement (TDR), a more intensive form of behavioural weight management programme, was already covered in an earlier toolkit policy.

These updates should give policymakers confidence that the toolkit can continue to help them to identify the most impactful policies when it comes to reducing obesity. We have updated our policy packages to reflect these additions, and the core messaging remains unchanged. A combination of prevention and treatment  remains Nesta’s preferred approach for halving obesity.

All these changes have been documented in the additional changelog page. This page was created for continued transparency on the toolkit.

We will continue to assess the evidence used and will publish further updates if we believe there is reason to do so.

To see the blueprint toolkit, visit blueprint.nesta.org.uk/

Anish Chacko, Katherine Parkin, Hugo Harper, Alex Eastaugh