Who should take action?

• Directors of public health and public health teams
• Health and wellbeing board chairs
• Clinical commissioning groups
• Executive directors of local authority services
• Council leaders and elected members
• Chief executive officer of the local education and training board

Actions

• Public health teams should identify and work with 'champions' who have a particular interest or role in preventing obesity in local authority and NHS strategy groups and public, private, community and voluntary sector bodies. This includes, for example, those involved in planning, transport, education and regeneration.

• All of the above should work to build and support a network of leaders from all organisations and partnerships that could make a contribution to preventing obesity. This should include relevant local authority and NHS services, voluntary and community organisations and the private sector.

• Directors of public health should support leaders at all levels (including senior and middle managers and frontline staff) of all the partnerships involved in local action on obesity, to ensure local people and organisations are empowered to take action. This means:

• providing regular opportunities for partners to meet and share learning in both formal meetings and informal, open environments, as appropriate​

• addressing any overlapping, fragmented or competing agendas among different partners and considering options to enhance cooperation and joint working (options might include workshops or away days)​

• funding small-scale community-led projects such as local gardening, cooking and walking groups; and exploring how such initiatives can contribute to defined long-term goals and can be evaluated in a proportionate way​

• fostering a 'learning culture' by explicitly supporting monitoring and evaluation, especially for innovative interventions, and allowing partnerships to build on effective action and change or discard less effective solutions (see planning systems for monitoring and evaluation and implementing monitoring and evaluation in this pathway).