Our healthy life mission aims to halve the prevalence of obesity in the UK by 2030. Poor health caused by excess weight is one of the leading causes of death across the UK. Since the early 1990s, obesity rates have doubled, blighting people’s lives and putting huge pressure on our NHS as well as damaging our economy through lost productivity.

Specifically, we’re seeking to make the case to the government for a set of measures which together would reduce obesity by more than 20%, drawing on the evidence in our Blueprint for halving obesity.

We know what should work, but we also want to ensure that taking the necessary action is not bad for business or consumers as evidenced by trial results, and that policy change is acceptable to the public.

The work of the policy team is to ensure our mission focus on primary prevention is responsive to, and couched in, the realities of public health and social care in the UK. We seek to grapple with the evidence, trade-offs, politics and pragmatism of health and social care reform.