This meeting of the HWE Integrated Care Partnership will include an update on the Essex Healthy Weight Strategy and will also cover what the NHS 10-year Health Plan consultation might mean for residents. The meeting will also include the Partnership's response to the Government's new national food policy.

Childhood Obesity

The most significant topic scheduled to be covered in this meeting is the ongoing effort by Hertfordshire County Council and Essex County Council to develop and implement childhood obesity strategies for their areas.

A report prepared for the meeting included the following statistics on childhood obesity.

Hertfordshire • Reception: overweight including obesity 18.2% • Year 6: increase in overweight and obesity from 27.8% in 2014/15 to 31.5% in 2022/23. Essex • Reception: overweight including obesity 20.5% • Year 6: overweight including obesity 34.2%

The Partnership has been asked to consider a number of pledges that could be made to reduce childhood obesity, including:

• Advocate for local and national action to help organisations promote healthy weight and reduce health inequalities
• Support front line health and care professionals (with training, tools and time) to be confident to have conversations with CYP¹ and parents and adults about healthy weight.
• Engage local food and drink retail sectors to consider responsible retailing such as offering and promoting healthier food and drink, reformulating and reducing the portion size of high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products.
• Protect children from inappropriate marketing from the food and drink industry advertisements. This could be through outdoor advertising policy and restrictions around ‘giveaways/ promotions’ at schools or local authority-controlled sites.

The Partnership has also been asked to agree next steps in the process, and to agree who will be responsible for each of the agreed actions.

Essex Healthy Weight Strategy

Adrian Coggins, the Head of Healthy Weight and Place Based Public Health at Essex County Council will be presenting an update on the Essex Healthy Weight Strategy. The report prepared in advance of the meeting states that there are 168 actions in the strategy, and provides some detail on what they are and how they will be resourced. The report specifically asks what the West Essex Districts & Healthcare Partnership can contribute to the strategy:

Of all the things which could be done WHAT ARE THE THINGS WHICH WILL GIVE US THE GREATEST IMPACT FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE FOR THE LONGEST TIME

• What can organisations in your local system best do from the prioritised list - consider what that means for local delivery: do resources need to be diverted from one thing to another?
• What is the total resource available locally to do this? (NB ECC can advise/give some support but not DO the local actions)
• Ensure a place based collective local accountability mechanism - eg H & WBB² and/or Alliance meeting standing agenda item) to hold the local place based systems to account for local delivery

National Food Policy

Elozona Umeh, the Health and Wellbeing Programme Lead at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) at the Department of Health and Social Care will be presenting an overview of the Government's new national food policy.

The agenda for the meeting states that the purpose of the presentation is:

to present an overview of national food policy to inform local discussion.

NHS 10-Year Health Plan

The Partnership will also be asked to respond to the NHS's consultation on its 10-Year Health Plan, which was published in October 2024 after the publication in September 2024 of Lord Darzi's review of the NHS in England.

The agenda for the meeting says that the consultation is intended to involve:

the public, NHS staff and patients in shaping the plan through a national conversation called “Change NHS: help build a health service fit for the future”.