Healthy weight in the GLP-1 era: book your place at the Food Active 2026 conference

Our Food Active programme’s annual conference returns online on Thursday 12 November, 9:30am–1:00pm, focusing on the impact of weight loss medications on policy and practice.

New weight-loss medicines such as Wegovy and Mounjaro are changing how obesity is treated in the UK, and fast. An estimated 1.6 million adults in Great Britain used them in a single year. NHS England’s initial goal is to reach 220,000 people over three years.

The majority of people using these medicines get them privately, often without the nutrition and lifestyle support that should come alongside them. People who can afford to pay get access now. Many in the communities where obesity is most common, and where interest and perhaps need in these medicines is highest, are left waiting.

Medicines on their own can’t fix the food environment either. Unhealthy food is still the cheapest, most heavily marketed and easiest option on our high streets. Meanwhile, supermarkets and food businesses are already working out how to respond to customers on GLP-1s. If prevention falls down the agenda, the conditions that drive obesity will stay exactly as they are.

So how do we get the balance right? How can we use these medicines well, make sure they reach the people who need them most, and keep prevention at the heart of government policy? Those are the questions at the heart of this year’s Food Active conference: Healthy Weight in the GLP-1 Era: Balancing treatment, equity and population health.

What we’ll explore

• Treatment and services: how GLP-1 medicines can fit into weight management services, and what it means to treat obesity as a chronic disease.
• Prevention: why creating healthier food environments matters as much as ever.
• Equity and stigma: making sure these medicines don’t widen health inequalities, and tackling weight stigma.
• The food industry: how retailers and the out-of-home sector are responding to GLP-1s.
• Government policy: keeping prevention at the centre of national policy, not just treatment.

Who should attend

The conference is for anyone working to improve healthy weight, including colleagues in local authority public health teams, the NHS, academia and the voluntary sector.

Confirmed speakers

• Professor Matthew Ashton (Chair), Director of Public Health, Liverpool City Council, and Lead Director of Public Health, Food Active
• Professor John Wilding, Professor of Medicine, University of Liverpool
• Ewan Maule, Chief Pharmacist and Director of Medicines and Pharmacy, NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board
• Professor Louisa Ells, Professor of Obesity, Leeds Beckett University
• Hannah Brinsden, Head of Policy and Advocacy, The Food Foundation
• Samantha Field, Senior Fellow in Prevention, The Health Foundation

Book your place: register here

 If you have any questions, email: info@heg.org.uk.