Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to evaluate the effectiveness of NHS weight management programmes.

The Department of Health and Social Care, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), has commissioned a range of research to evaluate the effectiveness of NHS weight management programmes.

This includes an evaluation of the NHS Digital Weight Management Programme, which reported in April 2024 and found it to be highly cost-effective service, helping people to lose a clinically meaningful amounts of weight. There is also a £1.7 million evaluation commencing looking at NHS England’s new service models to deliver weight loss drugs outside of hospital settings. It will provide evidence on the effectiveness of the models to support wider roll out. It is expected to report around 2028. In addition, there is a £1.4 million evaluation of NHS England’s Complications of Excess Weight clinics, which deliver tailored support to children and young people with severe or complex forms of obesity. The evaluation will provide evidence on optimal models of care to support future expansion of the clinics and is expected to report around 2026. There is also a range of other ongoing research relevant to weight management services, including looking at services for people with depression and looking at weight regain.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has also undertaken an evaluation of digital technologies delivering multidisciplinary weight-management services either with or without prescribing and monitoring obesity medicines. This was published in October 2023 and recommended the technologies that can be used in the NHS while more evidence is generated.