The National Obesity Forum Best Practice Awards for Excellence in Weight Management was once again one of the highlights of the 2006 conference.

These awards are an opportunity for the NOF to recognise the very hard work that goes on at local level to support individuals effectively in their journey to lose weight. It also gives a platform to these projects so that others may learn from their experiences and ultimately to disseminate good practice across the UK.

Every year the National Obesity Forum presents its Best Practice awards. Click Read More to see the winners from the years 2001 to 2004.

Click here to view the full version of the NOF 2006 Awards

Last years National Obesity Forum Primary Care Awards for excellence in weight management were an outstanding success. Who can forget the bravery of the 2 young people from Sheffield who spoke to the conference about their weight loss experiences and received rapturous applause? Or of the simplicity and efficacy of the approach used by our overall winner Kirriemuir Medical Practice?

In light of this success and to recognise and highlight the wealth of exceptionally good practice in tackling obesity and reducing cardio-metabolic risk we are offering four categories of entries for the 2006 awards.

We would welcome entries from practitioners whose work falls into one of the following weight management categories:

• Childhood and adolescents
• Workplace
• Physical activity
• Primary Care (including pharmacy, community based interventions etc.)

This year’s category for the NOF’s Primary Care Award for Excellence in Weight Management and Physical Activity was chosen in recognition of the important, and now evidence based role that physical activity plays in weight loss and especially in weight maintenance.

The number and quality of these years’ entries was extremely high and we would like to thank each and every project that took the time to document their project and submit an entry. It was one of the most enjoyable yet difficult tasks to select the finalists as each entry had their merits and the overall standard was extremely high. This is an indication of the breadth and depth of the work that is currently being undertaken to support weight management throughout the UK.

All the winning entries not only used the current evidence of effectiveness (energy reduction and physical activity combined with a behavioural approach) in supporting weight management success, but targeted those interventions to particular target groups who had complex additional barriers to overcome in their journey to losing weight.