On 20th April HSE Health and Wellbeing – Healthy Eating Active Living Programme hosted a workshop on Whole-Systems Approaches to Obesity Prevention.
Sarah O’Brien, National Lead Healthy Eating Active Living Programme facilitated the seminar. The aim of the workshop was to share insights and start a dialogue on whether taking a whole systems approach could assist with efforts to tackle the obesity pandemic in Ireland.
As well as inputs from leading experts, the seminar was attended by a range of people working in health, local authority and community sectors at local level and some key national stakeholders like the Department of Health.
On the day Prof Donal O’Shea, HSE Clinical Lead Obesity, spoke about how most of the factors that influence obesity lie outside of the control of individuals. Prof Gavin Breslin, University of Ulster, outlined the emerging evidence from systematic reviews and case studies on a Whole Systems Approach to preventing obesity. Dr Jenny Mack, Public Health Specialist with the Institute of Public Health, shared an overview of a rapid review of evidence to inform the new obesity policy in Northern Ireland.
These insights stimulated good discussion amongst those in attendance. It highlighted that there is potential for this approach to incentivise new ways of statutory and community sectors working together locally to deliver interventions at community level. It was evident in the discussion that this will shape the determinants of obesity and health to be more health promoting and ultimately improve health and wellbeing, with the cautionary note that it would be a challenging way to work and a very complex issue to tackle.
